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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made with milk, cornmeal, flour, salt, baking soda, yeast, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Scald the milk in the early morning.

  2. In an earthen cup, combine the cornmeal, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the mixture. Stir thoroughly.

  4. Set aside in a warm place until light.

  5. Sift a little flour into an earthen bowl. Add warm water. Stir in the yeast until well combined.

  6. Sift more flour into a larger dish. Add warm water and salt. Stir in the yeast mixture thoroughly.

  7. Keep the mixture warm until it rises and is ready to mold into loaves.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold the dough into 5 or 6 good-sized loaves. Butter the tops.

  2. Do not mix the dough too stiff or let it rise too much.

  3. Turn and change the loaves frequently in the oven.

  4. When the loaves have doubled in size, place them in the coolest part of the oven. Leave them until well-rounded.

  5. Grate the tops until brown. Move the loaves to the bottom to finish baking.

  6. Bake for about 45 minutes until a delicate golden brown.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk
Scalded milk gives the starter liquid and feeds the fermentation that leavens the loaves.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a coarse, rustic texture to the starter and the finished crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic starter to add a little lift and help the crumb open.
Flour
Builds the gluten structure that traps gas and holds the loaves' shape.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.

The step that matters

Keep the dough soft and let it rise only until doubled. A stiff dough resists rising and a dough over-proofed past doubling loses gas and structure, so the loaves can collapse or turn dense in the oven.

“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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