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Bread

Salt-raised Bread

A simple bread made with milk, water, salt, sugar, cornmeal, and wheat flour, risen in warm water and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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-raised Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Pour boiling water into a teacup of milk to reach about 90°F (32°C).

  2. Add salt and sugar, then stir in cornmeal and wheat flour until the mixture resembles pancake batter.

  3. Place the bowl in warm water to rise.

  4. If water gathers on top, dust with a little flour and stir.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer to earthenware pans and let stand until light.

  2. Bake in the oven when ready.

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. Flour + wheattop 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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + sugartop 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

Wheat flour
Builds the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure and crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its sugars and proteins help the crust brown.
Cornmeal or graham flour
Adds texture and flavour and helps start the fermentation that raises the batter.

The step that matters

Keeping the batter warm while it rises. The fermentation that lifts this bread depends on steady warmth. If the mixture gets too cold, it rises slowly or not at all, and if it gets too hot, the fermentation can sour the batter and collapse the rise.

“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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