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Bread with Buttermilk

A yeast bread made with buttermilk and flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bread with Buttermilk

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 sponge

  1. Bring buttermilk to a boil.

  2. Pour boiled buttermilk into a crock with sifted flour.

  3. Let cool.

  4. Add yeast.

  5. Add enough flour to make a thick batter.

  6. Stir the sponge well for a whiter bread.

  7. Let it sit overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, sift flour into a bread pan.

  2. Pour in the sponge.

  3. Stir in some flour.

  4. Let it stand until after breakfast.

  5. Knead for about 30 minutes.

  6. Mold into loaves.

  7. Knead as little as possible.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, which feed the yeast sponge and help give a tender crumb.
Flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the bread structure and holding the rise.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Knead as little as possible. Kneading develops gluten, which gives structure. Overworking the dough can make the crumb tough and dense, so the recipe's lighter kneading instruction should be followed.

“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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