Salt Raising Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the starter
Pour hot water into a two-quart pitcher and add coarse sea salt.
When the water is warm enough to hold your finger in, add 1⅓ pints of flour and mix well.
Leave the pitcher in a warm kettle of water until the batter doubles in size, about 5 to 8 hours, stirring once or twice.
Make the dough
Prepare a sponge with 1 quart of hot water and 2½ quarts of flour, adding more flour as needed to make a soft dough.
Mix well and leave in a warm place to rise until light.
Shape and bake
Mould the dough into loaves, keeping them soft, and place in buttered tins.
When the loaves rise again, prick them and bake.
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
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its crumb.
- Hot water
- Dissolves the starter and hydrates the flour so the dough can develop and rise.
- Yeast
- Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the dough so the loaf rises.
The step that matters
Leaving the starter until it doubles. The starter must ferment long enough to become active before the dough is made. Water that is too hot can kill yeast, so the water should feel warm, not hot, when the flour is added.
“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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