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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A cornmeal and flour bread that rises with yeast and baking soda, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, salt, sugar, and flour with boiling water, leaving out about 1 inch of water and filling with cold water.

  2. Place the mixture in a double boiler and set in a warm place to rise overnight.

  3. In the morning, stir in a pinch of baking soda and make a thick batter with flour.

  4. Beat well and let it rise in a warm place.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix 4 quarts of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 tablespoon of lard, rubbing the lard into the flour.

  2. Add the yeast mixture and enough warm water to form a dough.

  3. Knead for 15 minutes, then shape into loaves.

Bake

  1. Place in greased pans, grease the tops, and let rise until it cracks open.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the dough and gives the bread its structure.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a coarse texture to the starter.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Letting the starter rise overnight in a warm place. The starter must ferment long enough to develop leavening activity before it is mixed into the dough. Too cool or too short a rise leaves the bread flat and dense.

“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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