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Bread

Excellent Dairy-bread Made Without Yeast

A yeast-free dairy bread made with flour, sour buttermilk, sugar, soda, and salt, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk 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 ↓

Excellent Dairy-bread Made Without Yeast

Oven, in the book's wordsA fierce oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fierce oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dry mix

  1. Blend the sugar and carbonate of soda together.

  2. Mix the salt with the flour.

  3. Sift the soda and sugar into the flour.

  4. Stir the mixture well.

Make and bake

  1. Make a firm dough with sour buttermilk.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the bread as the dough sets in the oven.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release carbon dioxide, which makes the bread rise.
Sour buttermilk
Supplies acid to activate the soda and adds moisture for a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Make a firm dough with sour buttermilk. Carbonate of soda needs an acid to release gas. The dough should be mixed and shaped promptly once the buttermilk is added, so the gas is trapped before it escapes and the loaf rises well.

“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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