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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made by mixing middlings, sugar, salt, baking soda, and boiling water, then adding flour and water, letting rise, shaping, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. In a coffee cup, mix the middlings, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Pour in boiling water, stirring until nearly full.

  3. Cover the cup and set it in a warm place to rise until light.

Make the dough

  1. In a bread pan, add enough flour for bread and 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Slowly stir the boiling water into the flour.

  3. Add cold water or milk until the mixture is cool enough to touch.

  4. Stir in the middlings well and cover with flour.

  5. Set in a warm place until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into loaves, grease the pans and tops of the loaves.

  2. Make deep gashes across the loaves for even rising.

  3. Bake near the stove for about 30 minutes.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Middlings
Ferments with the warm water to leaven the bread, producing the rise and characteristic flavor.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the gas produced during rising, giving the loaf its crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic fermenting mixture to release gas and help the loaves lighten.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation so the starter becomes active and rises.

The step that matters

Cooling the dough before adding the starter. If the mixture is still very hot when the starter is stirred in, the heat can kill the live cultures and stop the dough from rising. Cooling it until it is just comfortable to touch protects the fermentation.

“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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