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Bread

Wheat-meal Bread, Unfermented

A simple unfermented bread made from wheat meal, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, salt, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and buttermilk 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 ↓

Wheat-meal Bread, Unfermented

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. Sift the wheat meal, cream of tartar, and baking soda together.

  2. Make a well in the wheat meal and add the caster sugar and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix all ingredients together with enough buttermilk to form a nice dough.

  4. Weigh off the dough into 2 lb portions.

Bake

  1. Bake on the oven bottom with oval tins placed over them.

  2. Put into the oven as soon as possible after shaping.

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. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rough wheat meal
Provides the main structure of the loaf as its starches and proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with baking soda to release carbon dioxide for rising.
Baking soda
Supplies the alkali that reacts with the acid to produce gas, lifting the bread.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture to form the dough and its acidity helps activate the baking soda.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Put into the oven as soon as possible after shaping. The acid and baking soda start releasing gas as soon as the dough is wet. Delaying the bake lets that gas escape before the heat sets the structure, which can leave the loaf flat and dense.

“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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