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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made with cornmeal, baking soda, salt, milk, water, and spring wheat flour, leavened by salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Combine cornmeal, baking soda, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Heat the milk until it boils.

  3. Pour the boiled milk over the cornmeal mixture and stir for 15 seconds.

  4. Cover and let the mixture sit in a warm place for 10 to 14 hours, or until it rises.

Make the dough

  1. In a two-gallon crock, mix hot water with enough spring wheat flour to create a stiff sponge.

  2. Add the risen mixture and the same amount of baking soda. Stir again.

  3. When the mixture is light, transfer it to a dishpan with warm flour.

  4. Add salt and 3 quarts of hot water to form a light dough.

  5. Add more flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold the dough and place it in pans.

  2. Keep the dough warm.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Spring wheat flour
Forms the stiff sponge and the dough, providing the structure of the loaf.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the starter, feeding the fermentation.
Baking soda
Reacts with the fermented starter to lighten the dough and help it rise.
Cornmeal
Gives the starter its base for fermentation and adds a slightly grainy texture.

The step that matters

Let the starter rise fully. The starter must ferment long enough to become light and bubbly before it is mixed into the dough. Underfermented starter gives a dense loaf, because the rising power comes from this slow fermentation.

“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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