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Milk, or Salt Rising Bread

A simple bread made by mixing water, salt, and flour, then allowing it to rise and bake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Milk, or Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Make a thin batter and place the pitcher in a kettle of warm water, maintaining a temperature of 70°F to 80°F.

  2. Cover the pitcher with a saucer and let it sit for about 5 hours until it begins to rise with fine bubbles.

Make the dough

  1. Add 1 quart of water and a little more salt, then mix in flour to form a soft dough.

  2. Place the dough in 3 brick‑shaped baking tins to rise until it has nearly doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Bake the bread until done, ensuring any disagreeable gas is driven off during baking.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the soft dough structure that traps gas and sets into the crumb when baked.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can develop and makes the batter and dough workable.

The step that matters

Keeping the starter warm. Salt rising bread relies on naturally occurring bacteria rather than yeast. Holding the batter between 70°F and 80°F lets these microbes ferment and produce gas; temperatures that are too cool slow or stall the rise.

“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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