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Bread

Salt-rising Bread

A bread made by fermenting a milk meal sponge, then mixing with flour, salt, lard, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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-rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Pour scalding milk over sifted meal and set in a warm place overnight.

  2. In the morning, mix lukewarm water with the meal, salt, baking soda, and sugar.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a thick sponge, leaving some flour on top.

  4. Set the sponge in a pot of warm water and cover both tightly.

  5. Let it rise for 2-3 hours until it doubles in size.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 quarts of flour with 1 teaspoon salt and the lard.

  2. Make a hole in the center and pour in the risen mixture.

  3. If needed, add more lukewarm water to incorporate all the flour.

  4. Knead the dough for about 20 minutes, shape into loaves, and let rise.

Bake

  1. Bake the loaves.

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 + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Sifted meal
Feeds the fermentation that leavens the starter and gives the bread its flavor.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the starter to help the bread rise.
Sugar
Provides food for the fermenting yeast and bacteria in the starter.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise until doubled. The starter must ferment fully before the dough is mixed. Underfermented sponge gives a dense loaf, while the warm, covered setting keeps fermentation steady.

“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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