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Salt-rising Bread

A bread made from cornmeal, sweet milk, lard, baking soda, and salt, leavened by a spongy mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt-rising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with the sweet milk until hot, then beat until thicker than ordinary thickening.

  2. Set the mixture in a bowl of lukewarm water, cover, and keep warm until light and spongy, about overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, make a batter with the warm sweet milk or water and flour, slightly stiffer than pancake batter.

  2. Add the spongy mixture and a pinch of baking soda, then set in warm water by the fire until very light.

  3. Mix in the lard, salt, and warm milk or water, then knead well, adding as little flour as possible.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into loaves and set in a warm place to rise.

  2. When light, bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about one 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Cornmeal
Forms the fermenting starter that leavens the loaf.
Flour
Builds the structure of the dough that holds the gas produced during rising.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the starter to add lift to the dough.

The step that matters

Keeping the rising warm and gentle. Salt-rising bread relies on slow fermentation by bacteria in the starter. If the starter or dough gets too cold, fermentation stalls; if it gets too hot, the bread can sour and fail to rise evenly. Letting it become light and spongy before shaping gives the loaf its lift.

“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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