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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made by fermenting milk and cornmeal overnight, then mixing with flour, baking soda, and water, and baking after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Heat the milk to boiling and pour it over the cornmeal, sugar, and salt in a heated quart jar.

  2. Keep the jar in a warm place overnight at an even temperature.

Make the sponge

  1. In the morning, scald 1 quart of hot water with 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

  2. Add flour to make a batter slightly thicker than pancake batter, then mix in the risen mixture from the jar.

  3. Beat the mixture for a few minutes and transfer it to a tightly covered 10-pound lard bucket.

  4. Set the bucket in a kettle of hot water, keeping it in a very warm place free from drafts.

Shape and bake

  1. When the dough has doubled in size, add warmed flour and shape it into loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise and then bake.

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. 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

Milk
Provides liquid and sugars that feed the starter's fermentation and add softness to the crumb.
Cornmeal
Feeds the wild fermentation in the starter and adds a slightly grainy texture and flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic starter to release gas, helping the dough rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.

The step that matters

Keeping the sponge warm and free from drafts. Salt rising bread relies on slow fermentation by naturally occurring bacteria, which works best at a steady, even warmth. Drafts or temperature swings can stall the rise, leaving a dense loaf.

“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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