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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A yeast‑free bread made with milk, water, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, salt, flour, and lard, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil ½ pint of new milk and thicken with cornmeal.

  2. Set the mixture in a warm place to lighten.

  3. Scald ½ pint of sweet milk with 1 pint of hot water.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  5. Stir in flour to make a stiff batter.

  6. When cool enough not to kill the yeast, add the cornmeal.

  7. Beat well.

  8. Place the mixture in a ½ gallon jar.

  9. Set it in warm water until it rises.

Mix and bake

  1. Add 3 siftings of flour, a little more salt, and a walnut‑sized piece of lard.

  2. Work the dough for about 5 minutes.

  3. Put the dough in greased pans.

  4. Let it rise.

  5. Bake.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

New milk
Its proteins and sugars add richness and help the thickened cornmeal mixture ferment and lighten.
Flour
Its gluten forms the stiff batter and dough structure that holds the rising bread.
Cornmeal (in the method)
Thickens the mixture and provides the starch and fermentable material that feeds the culture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture of the baked loaf.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the cornmeal. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough that the culture survives. If it is too hot, the rise fails and the bread stays dense.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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