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Bread

Quick Method for Salt Rising Bread

A bread made by mixing milk, sugar, salt, cornmeal, flour, and shortening, then fermenting and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Quick Method for Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the starter

  1. Mix the milk, sugar, salt, and cornmeal together.

  2. Add 2 cups of warmed flour and beat until free from lumps.

  3. Pour the mixture into a tightly covered bucket and place it in a larger bucket of nearly hot water for 4 hours. Maintain the water temperature so that it is comfortable to hold your hand in without burning.

Make the dough

  1. After 4 hours, add the remaining 9 1/2 cups of warmed flour and shortening, then knead for 10 minutes.

  2. Mold the dough into three or four loaves.

Rise and bake

  1. Grease the pans and the tops of the loaves, then let them rise until doubled in size. Keep the loaves at about 80°F (27°C) and protect the dough from drafts.

  2. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 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 the liquid and nutrients that the starter's fermentation works in.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Cornmeal
Feeds the starter's fermentation and adds a slightly gritty texture to the crumb.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Maintaining the starter's water-bath temperature. Salt rising bread relies on a slow fermentation driven by bacteria rather than commercial yeast. If the water bath runs too hot, the starter can be killed, and if it runs too cool, fermentation stalls and the loaves will not rise well.

“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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