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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made with cornmeal, flour, lard, and a leavening mixture of soda and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with hot milk at once.

  2. The next morning, mix warm water, salt, sugar, and soda in a bowl.

  3. Thicken the mixture, then beat in the raised cornmeal.

  4. Transfer to an airtight vessel and keep warm.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, warm water, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add lard and mix to form a soft dough.

  3. Place the dough in pans as soon as kneaded.

Bake

  1. Put lard on top of each loaf, keep warm, and let rise.

  2. Bake for 35 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 main structure of the loaf as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Cornmeal
Scalded and raised into the starter, adding body and a coarser texture to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the loaf moist.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and provides food that supports fermentation in the starter.

The step that matters

Keep the starter warm. Fermentation depends on steady warmth. If the starter cools, it rises slowly or not at all, and the dough will not lift properly.

“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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