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Bread

Excellent Dairy-bread Made Without Yeast

A yeast-free bread made with all-purpose flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and sour buttermilk.

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 dough

  1. Blend the sugar and carbonate of soda together.

  2. Mix the salt with the flour.

  3. Sift the soda and sugar mixture into the flour. Stir the dry ingredients well.

  4. Add sour buttermilk to form a firm dough.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake for about 50 minutes, or 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 + 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. Flour + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the loaf once mixed with liquid.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the sour buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the bread without yeast.
Sour buttermilk
Its acidity activates the carbonate of soda and it moistens the dough into a firm mass.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Sift the soda and sugar mixture into the flour, then stir well. Carbonate of soda must be evenly dispersed through the flour before liquid is added. Clumps leave pockets of bitter alkali and uneven rising, while even distribution gives a uniform crumb.

“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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