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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A yeast-free bread made by mixing flour, lard, milk, water, salt, and cornmeal, then letting it rise and bake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Cool the hot water until it is warm enough to bear your finger in it.

  2. Add the salt, cornmeal, and 10 tablespoons of flour to the water and beat until smooth.

  3. Sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of flour over the top and cover.

  4. Let stand in a warm place for 5 hours until clear water rises on top.

  5. Drain off the water and beat the mixture thoroughly.

  6. Set aside for another hour until light and frothy.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the salt.

  2. Work in the lard with your fingertips.

  3. Make a well in the center, pour in the yeast preparation and warm milk.

  4. Stir with a spoon until too stiff to continue.

  5. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide into four parts and place in buttered baking pans, filling each pan half full.

  2. Let rise until full and bake for 50 minutes.

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).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaves their structure and chew.
Lard
Works into the flour to add tenderness and a short, soft crumb.
Warm milk
Moistens the dough and adds richness and softness to the crumb.
White cornmeal
Feeds the fermentation in the starter, helping it rise and turn frothy.

The step that matters

Cooling the hot water before mixing the starter. If the water is too hot, it can kill the yeast and bacteria in the starter, so it will not rise. Cool it until it feels warm, not hot, on your finger.

“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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