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Bread

Buttermilk Bread

A yeasted bread made with buttermilk, yeast cake, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Pour enough flour into the hot buttermilk to make a thick batter.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in warm water and add it to the batter.

  3. Let the dough rise.

Add the soda and shape

  1. Once light, dissolve the baking soda in warm water and mix it into the batter.

  2. Add flour until the dough is no longer sticky.

  3. Let the dough rise again.

  4. Shape the dough into loaves.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help lift the loaf.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to release carbon dioxide, adding lift.
Flour
Builds the gluten structure that holds the risen dough and gives the loaf its crumb.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda once the dough is light. Baking soda reacts with the buttermilk's acid to release carbon dioxide right away. Mixing it in evenly once the dough has risen keeps that gas distributed through the batter so the loaf rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

“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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