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Bread

Snowflake Bread with Buttermilk

A yeast bread made with water, buttermilk, yeast, sugar, salt, and lard, rolled and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Snowflake Bread with Buttermilk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine water and buttermilk in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve yeast in the mixture and let it sit until bubbly.

  3. Add sugar, salt, and lard to the mixture and stir to form a smooth dough.

  4. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in size.

  5. Roll the dough through a pasta machine or rolling pin 10 to 15 times.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into portions and shape them into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in pans and let them rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes sweetness and browning in the crust.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, giving the dough a tender crumb and tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas for the dough to expand fully. Under-rising leaves a dense loaf, while the rise before baking sets the final crumb and volume.

“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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