Salt Rising Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the rising
In a two-quart bowl, combine warm water and coarse sea salt.
Stir in flour to create a stiff batter for the rising.
Cover the bowl and place it in a kettle of warm water, maintaining the temperature.
After 3 hours, stir in 2 tablespoons of flour.
After 5.5 hours, when the mixture is nearly at the top of the bowl, make a sponge in the center of the flour with 1 quart of warm water.
Stir the rising into the sponge, cover with a little dry flour, and keep warm.
Shape and bake
After 45 minutes, mix into a stiff dough without overworking it.
Shape the loaves slightly larger and let them rise for another 45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to a hotter temperature than for yeast bread.
Bake until the bread is white with a light brown crust.
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 batter and dough that give the loaf its structure as it rises and sets.
- Warm water
- Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter warm and active during the long rising.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the bread and slows fermentation, helping control the rise.
The step that matters
Keeping the rising warm. The rising relies on steady warmth to ferment slowly. If the temperature drops, the batter stops developing and the loaf may come out dense and flat.
“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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