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Salt Rising Bread

Bread made with salt, cornmeal, flour, lard, milk, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the starter

  1. Cool the hot water until it is warm enough to bear your finger in it.

  2. Add the salt, cornmeal, and 10 tablespoons of flour, then beat until smooth.

  3. Sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of flour over the top.

  4. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 5 hours until clear water rises on top.

  5. Drain off the water.

  6. Beat the mixture thoroughly, then set aside for another hour until it becomes light and frothy.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt.

  2. Work in the lard with your fingers.

  3. Make a well in the center.

  4. Pour in the yeast mixture and the warm milk.

  5. Stir with a spoon until too stiff to continue.

  6. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide into four parts and place in buttered baking pans, filling each pan halfway.

  2. Let rise until full.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaves their structure and chew.
Lard
Coats flour strands to shorten the crumb and give a tender texture.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its milk sugars help the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the starter rise until light and frothy. The starter's fermentation provides the leavening for the whole loaf. If it is not yet bubbly and frothy, the dough will not rise well, so the full hour of standing should not be rushed.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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