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Dairy-Bread Made Without Yeast

A yeast-free bread made with buttermilk, sugar, soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dairy-Bread Made Without Yeast

Oven, in the book's wordsA fierce oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Blend the sugar and soda together.

  2. Mix the salt with the flour in a basin.

  3. Rub the sugar and soda through a fine sieve into the flour.

  4. Mix thoroughly and form a firm but not hard dough with the buttermilk.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into two or more loaves.

  2. Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Sour buttermilk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and adds tang and moisture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide, which leavens the bread.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after shaping. Carbonate of soda reacts with the acid in the buttermilk as soon as the dough is wet, releasing gas. Delaying the bake lets that gas escape, so the loaves rise less.

“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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