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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

Make the starter

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

  2. Fill the cup 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 and add a teaspoon of flour once or twice during fermentation.

  6. After about five hours, sift flour into a pan and make an opening in the center.

Make the dough

  1. Pour in the yeast mixture and add warm milk or milk and water.

  2. Stir rapidly into a pulpy mass with a spoon.

  3. Cover the sponge and keep warm for an hour.

  4. Knead into loaves, adding flour for the right consistency.

Bake and store

  1. Place in warm, greased pans, cover, and let rise until light.

  2. Bake in a steady oven and let steam escape when done.

  3. Wrap in damp towels and 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

Coarse flour
Forms the batter and sponge that ferment, and later the structure of the loaves.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour and provides the medium in which the starter ferments.
Brown sugar
Provides a small amount of sugar that feeds the fermentation in the starter.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and richness to the dough, softening the crumb.

The step that matters

Maintaining an even temperature during fermentation. Fermentation proceeds unevenly if the temperature swings, so the starter may sour or fail to rise. Steady warmth lets the culture work consistently, and a small added flour feeding keeps it active.

“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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