Skip to main content
Bread

Salt-rising Bread

A bread made from milk, water, salt, cornmeal, lard, and flour, left to rise overnight and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Salt-rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the starter

  1. Heat 2 cups of milk in a pot until it boils, then let it cool.

  2. Add the salt and enough cornmeal to create a thick batter. Beat well and set aside in a warm place overnight.

  3. The next day, add 1 cup of warm water and enough flour to make a thick batter. Beat well.

  4. Place the mixture in a warm area until it becomes light.

Make and bake the bread

  1. In a large bowl, combine 3 quarts of flour, 1 tablespoon of lard, and 1 tablespoon of salt with the risen mixture.

  2. Add equal parts warm milk and water to form a stiff dough. Knead thoroughly.

  3. Shape the dough into loaves and let them rise until doubled in size.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 50 to 60 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. 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

Cornmeal
Forms the thick batter that ferments into the starter, giving the bread its base.
Flour
Provides the structure of the dough, building gluten as it is kneaded.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the dough, softening its texture.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and softens the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the starter rise until light. The starter must become light and bubbly before it is mixed into the dough. Its fermentation provides the leavening, so an under-risen starter leaves the loaves 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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes