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Bread

Salt-rising Bread

Bread made with warm water, meal, coarse sea salt, potato slices, flour, lard, and salt, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt-rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Combine warm water, meal, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Add potato slices and let rise in warm water.

  3. Stir in a little flour around 11 o'clock.

  4. Once it rises, remove the potato.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Mix 5 pints of flour, lard, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. If the mixture is too stiff, add warm water.

  3. Knead the dough well.

  4. Shape into rolls or loaves as desired.

  5. Grease the pans and the top of the bread with lard to keep it soft.

Rise and bake

  1. Set the dough in a warm place to rise.

  2. Once it has risen sufficiently, bake.

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 + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the loaf soft.
Potato
Supplies starch and wild microbes that start the fermentation of the starter.
Meal
Feeds the microbes in the starter so it can rise.

The step that matters

Judging the starter's rise. The starter must rise fully before it is added to the dough. Under-fermented starter gives weak leavening, while over-fermented starter turns sour and off-flavoured. Keeping the water warm supports steady 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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