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Salt-rising Bread

A bread made with a scalded meal starter, flour, lard, salt, and water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Salt-rising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Pour ½ cup boiling milk over 1 tablespoon sifted meal.

  2. Set the mixture in a hot place overnight.

  3. Stir the scalded meal into a stiff batter made of ½ pint lukewarm water and 2 coffee-cupfuls flour.

  4. Place the batter in a covered vessel in steaming hot water, but not hot enough to cook it.

  5. Let the batter rise in a warm place.

Make the dough

  1. Combine 4 quarts flour, 1 large tablespoon lard, and ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt in a large bowl.

  2. Pour in the rising mixture and 1½ pint lukewarm water.

  3. Make a soft dough.

  4. Work the dough for about 5 minutes.

  5. Shape the dough into loaves.

Rise and bake

  1. Fill the pans halfway with loaves.

  2. Set the loaves in a moderately warm place to rise until they fill the pans.

  3. Bake the loaves in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

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 + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Coffee + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,141 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

Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen loaf together.
Meal
Feeds the fermentation that leavens the starter and gives the bread its flavour.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Milk
Scalded milk adds richness and softness to the starter mixture.

The step that matters

Keeping the starter warm but not cooked. The batter must stay warm enough for fermentation to proceed, but if it gets hot enough to cook, the wild yeasts and bacteria that leaven the bread are killed and the rise fails.

“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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