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Bread

Kentucky Salt Rising Bread

A yeast bread made with sweet milk, water, salt, lard, flour, and corn meal, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Kentucky Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Scald one cup of sweet milk and add a pinch of salt to the milk.

  2. Add enough corn meal to make a batter.

  3. Put the batter in a warm place overnight to sour.

  4. In the morning, add one pint of warm water to the batter.

  5. Add enough flour to make a batter.

  6. Set the batter in a warm place to rise; this will take about two hours.

Make the dough and bake

  1. To three sifters of flour, add one teaspoonful of salt.

  2. Add one tablespoonful of lard to the flour mixture.

  3. Add half a cup of yeast to the flour mixture.

  4. Work the mixture into a sponge, adding lukewarm water.

  5. Set the sponge to rise; this will take about three hours.

  6. When it has risen, bake in a slow oven for about 40 or 50 minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

719Calories
21 gProtein
22 gFat
107 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the bread once mixed into a sponge.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge rise and gives the bread its lift.
Lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and tenderizes the texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter and helps give a soft crumb.
Corn meal (in the method)
Gives the starter body and feeds the souring process in the batter.

The step that matters

Setting the batter to sour overnight. The starter must sit warm long enough for natural fermentation to sour it. If it is too cold or too short, it will not develop the sourness or leavening power the bread needs to rise properly.

“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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