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Salt Rising Bread That Never Fails

A bread made with meal, sugar, salt, milk, baking soda, water, flour, and lard, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Salt Rising Bread That Never Fails

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches boiling point.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the meal, sugar, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight to rise.

Make the batter

  1. In the morning, scald the sugar, salt, and baking soda with hot water.

  2. Cool the scalded mixture to lukewarm.

  3. Add the risen mixture and enough warm flour to create a stiff batter.

  4. Place the batter in a kettle of hot water, maintaining a comfortable temperature.

Shape and bake

  1. When the batter is light, mix in the lard and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves.

  3. Let the loaves rise until light.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Meal
Provides the starch and enzymes that ferment the starter and leaven the bread.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaves their crumb.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness to the starter and the finished crumb.
Sweet lard
Tenderizes the crumb and adds richness to the dough.
Baking soda
Neutralizes acidity in the fermented batter and helps it rise.

The step that matters

Keeping the batter warm while it rises. Salt rising bread relies on wild bacterial fermentation, which is slow and temperature-sensitive. Too cool and the batter stays flat; too hot and the yeast-like activity weakens, so the batter must stay at a comfortable, steady warmth until it is light.

“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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