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Salt-Rising Bread

A bread made with a cornmeal starter and salt that rises in warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Prepare a cornmeal starter and keep it covered in a warm place from noon until the next morning.

  2. Scald a quart cup, add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, and fill one-third with lukewarm water.

  3. Add the cornmeal starter to the mixture.

  4. Sift in enough warmed flour to form a stiff drop batter. Beat the batter thoroughly.

  5. Place the cup in moderately hot water and maintain an even temperature until the mixture rises, about 2 to 5 hours.

Make and bake the dough

  1. Sift flour into a bread pan. Make a well in the center of the flour.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of salt to the well. Pour in enough lukewarm water or milk to make a soft dough.

  3. Knead lightly for a few moments. Shape the dough into small loaves.

  4. Place the loaves in greased pans. Let the loaves rise in a warm place until almost doubled in bulk.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 1 hour. Optionally, brush the top with a glaze before removing from the oven.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cornmeal starter
Ferments the batter, producing gas that leavens the bread.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen loaves together.
Lukewarm water or milk
Hydrates the flour and starter, forming a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Holding the starter at an even warm temperature until it rises. The starter must stay warm and steady so the fermentation proceeds evenly. Too cool slows the rise, while overheating can kill the yeast-like microbes and leave the bread flat and sour.

“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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