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Bread

Buttermilk Bread

A yeasted bread made with buttermilk, yeast, baking soda, sugar, salt, butter, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the buttermilk.

  2. Add the yeast and baking soda.

  3. Stir in the sugar, salt, and butter.

  4. Form a soft dough with warm flour.

  5. Knead the dough well.

  6. Let the dough rise.

  7. Knead the dough again.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the dough in greased tins.

  2. Let the dough rise again.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sour buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, and its acid reacts with the baking soda to help the loaf rise.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar and produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour buttermilk to release carbon dioxide, adding lift.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise. The yeast needs warm, enough time to produce gas; under-rising leaves a dense loaf, while over-rising can collapse the structure and weaken the final rise.

“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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