Skip to main content
Bread

Salt-raising Bread

A bread made by fermenting a salt and flour mixture, then baking the dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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-raising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Scald a quart tin cup or earthen milk pitcher.

  2. Fill the cup one-third full with warm water.

  3. Add salt, brown sugar, and enough coarse flour to make a batter.

  4. Place the cup in a closed vessel half-filled with moderately hot water.

  5. Maintain an even temperature during fermentation.

  6. Add a teaspoon of flour once or twice during fermentation.

Make the sponge

  1. Sift flour into a pan.

  2. Make a well in the center of the sifted flour.

  3. Pour in the yeast mixture.

  4. Stir in warm salted milk or milk and water until a pulpy mass forms.

  5. Cover the sponge.

  6. Keep the sponge warm for an hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough into loaves.

  2. Add flour to achieve the right consistency.

  3. Place the loaves in greased pans.

  4. Cover the loaves.

  5. Let the loaves rise until light.

  6. Bake in a steady oven.

  7. Let steam escape.

  8. Wrap the loaves in damp towels until needed.

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

Coarse flour
Feeds the fermentation in the starter, supplying material for the yeast-like culture to work on.
Flour
Forms the gluten network in the dough that traps gas and gives the loaf its structure.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding a tender texture.
Brown sugar
Provides sugars that feed fermentation and add a little sweetness and colour.
Salt
Controls fermentation pace and strengthens the gluten for a more even crumb.

The step that matters

Maintain an even temperature during fermentation. Fermentation speed depends on temperature. Too hot kills the microbes or overworks the starter, while too cold stalls it. A steady warm temperature lets the starter rise evenly before the dough is mixed.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes