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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A cornmeal bread made with milk, water, wheat flour, and salt, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the cornmeal

  1. Scald ½ cup cornmeal in warm milk at night, then wrap and keep in a warm place overnight.

Make the batter

  1. In the morning, mix the cornmeal with 2½ cups warm water and 1 teaspoon salt, thickening with wheat flour to a stiff batter consistency.

  2. Keep the mixture in a warm place until it rises.

Make the dough

  1. Add up to 1 quart of water and mix with flour to achieve a bread dough consistency.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into loaves and let rise for about 1 hour.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or 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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Gives the bread its coarse texture, flavor and golden color.
Wheat flour
Its gluten builds the structure that lets the dough hold its shape and rise.
Milk
Softens the cornmeal during scalding and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Reaching the bread dough consistency. Wheat flour's gluten gives the loaves structure to hold their shape and rise. Cornmeal has no gluten, so too much cornmeal or liquid leaves the loaves dense, wet and crumbly.

“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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