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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made by mixing warm water, salt, sugar, and flour, letting it rise, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the starter

  1. Combine 1 pint of warm water, ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and 1 teaspoon of sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir until thick like pancake batter.

  3. Place the bowl in warm water.

  4. Let it sit for 3 hours until bubbles form on the surface.

  5. Thicken the mixture with flour until it reaches the original thickness.

  6. Let it sit for another 3 hours.

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald 1 pint of flour.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Mix the rising batter with warm water.

  4. Knead until stiff on a warm surface.

Bake

  1. Place the dough in a baking pan.

  2. Let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and milk 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 bulk of the dough and gives the baked loaf its structure.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter warm and moist for fermentation.
Sugar
Feeds the fermenting microorganisms in the starter and adds mild sweetness.
Baking soda
Adds alkaline lift and helps the loaf rise and brown.

The step that matters

Let the starter sit until bubbles form. The starter relies on slow fermentation to leaven the bread. Keeping it warm and waiting until bubbles appear shows the batter is active, so the dough will 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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