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Bread

Salt-rising Bread

A cornmeal bread made with sweet milk, water, salt, sugar, baking soda, and flour, rising in warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald cornmeal with boiling sweet milk until thicker than sweet cream.

  2. Set aside in a warm place overnight.

  3. In the morning, combine boiling water, sweet milk, salt, sugar, and baking soda.

  4. Let the mixture cool until warm.

  5. Add enough flour to make a batter.

  6. Beat the batter well and stir in the prepared cornmeal.

  7. Set the mixture in a kettle of warm water to keep it warm.

  8. Let it rise quickly.

Shape and bake

  1. In a bowl of sifted flour, make a hole in the center and pour in the sponge mixture.

  2. Add a cup of tepid sweet milk and more salt.

  3. Let it rise.

  4. Knead lightly into loaves.

  5. Let the loaves rise again.

  6. Bake.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 body and coarse crumb of the bread.
Flour
Provides gluten structure so the batter holds its shape as loaves.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and tenderness and helps the cornmeal soften and swell.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas for rising and lightness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise properly. The sponge must be warm and well risen before shaping. Cold conditions slow fermentation, and cornmeal lacks gluten, so the loaves depend on this early rise for lightness.

“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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