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Bread

Salt-raising Bread

A bread made by fermenting a batter of water, salt, sugar, and flour, then baking the risen dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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-raising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Scald a quart tin cup or earthen milk pitcher.

  2. Fill it one-third full with warm water.

  3. Add salt, brown sugar, and enough flour to make a batter.

  4. Place the cup in a closed vessel half-filled with moderately hot water.

  5. Maintain an even temperature.

  6. Add flour once or twice during fermentation.

Make the sponge

  1. Sift flour into a pan.

  2. Make an opening in the center.

  3. Pour in the yeast mixture.

  4. Stir in warm milk or milk and water until a pulpy mass forms.

  5. Cover the sponge.

  6. Keep warm for an hour.

Shape, rise and bake

  1. Knead into loaves. Add flour for proper consistency.

  2. Place in greased pans. Cover.

  3. Let rise until light.

  4. Bake in a steady oven. Let steam escape when done.

  5. Wrap in damp towels.

  6. Store in closed earthen jars.

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 + milktop 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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that the bread's crumb is built on.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and richness to the sponge and dough, softening the crumb.
Brown sugar
Feeds the fermentation, giving the yeast food to produce gas for rising.

The step that matters

Maintain an even temperature during fermentation. Fermentation depends on steady warmth. Sudden cooling slows or stops the yeast, while overheating can kill it, so the dough may fail to 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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