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Excellent Dairy-bread Made Without Yeast

A quick yeast-free dairy bread made with buttermilk, soda, sugar, salt, and flour.

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.

Mix the dry ingredients

  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 and stir the mixture well.

Form and bake

  1. Add sour buttermilk to form a firm dough.

  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
Provides the main structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to release gas, making the bread rise.
Sour buttermilk
Supplies moisture and acidity, which activates the soda and tenderises the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Add the buttermilk and bake promptly. Carbonate of soda starts releasing carbon dioxide as soon as it meets the acid in the buttermilk. Waiting before the dough goes into the oven lets that gas escape, so the loaf rises less.

“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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