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Heat
Use buttermilk which is not too sour.
1 quart of it to the boiling point, stirring frequently to prevent curdling. Add 1 tablespoonful of sugar, set aside for five minutes and mix gradually with 1 quart of sifted flour, beating and stirring until a smooth batter is made.
Cover closely and let stand over night. Then add to the batter 1 teaspoonful of baking-soda dissolved in ¼ of a cupful of hot water, 1 scant tablespoonful of salt and 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter or shortening. Beat well, then gradually sift and mix in sufficient flour to make a soft dough. Turn out on a well-floured board and knead until very soft and velvety to the touch. Divide into thirds, mold into loaves, place in greased pans and bake at once in a moderate oven.
An overnight buttermilk sponge leavened with soda rather than yeast — the header "Heat" is a fragment of the first instruction, which belongs at the start of the second sentence: heat 1 quart of buttermilk to the boiling point.
- Reading the numbersThe quantities were checked against the printed page and stand as given here: 1 quart buttermilk, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 quart flour for the sponge, then 1 teaspoon soda dissolved in a quarter cupful of hot water.
- Moderate ovenGenerally taken as about 350 to 375F. Three loaves of this size need roughly 40 to 50 minutes; the crumb is done at an internal temperature of about 200F.
- The curdling is expectedBringing buttermilk to a boil will break it into curds and whey no matter how much you stir. Frequent stirring only keeps it from catching on the bottom of the pan. The mixture smooths out once the flour goes in.
- Scald, then cool before mixingThe five-minute rest is not enough to bring a quart of near-boiling liquid down. Mix the flour in when the buttermilk is warm rather than hot, or the batter stiffens into paste.
- No yeast, and the soda goes in lastThe rise comes entirely from soda reacting with the lactic acid the sponge develops overnight. That reaction begins the moment the two meet, which is why the recipe says to bake "at once" — the loaves will not improve for sitting in the pans.
- Buttermilk that is not too sourCultured supermarket buttermilk works. Avoid the thick, heavily acidified kind.
- Flour by feel"Sufficient flour to make a soft dough" will take a good deal more flour than went into the sponge; add it by feel and stop at soft and slightly tacky. Overshooting gives a dry, crumbly loaf with nothing to lift it.
- SaltA scant tablespoon across three loaves is about right by modern taste; measure it scant if using fine table salt rather than a coarse one.
- YieldThree loaves. The crumb is close and faintly tangy, closer to a soda bread than a yeasted sandwich loaf; it is best the day it is baked and excellent toasted after that.
Buttermilk bread of this kind belongs to a long tradition of using the thin, sour liquid left from churning butter as both liquid and leavening — the acid in it reacts with baking soda to raise the dough, a trick that spread through home baking after cheap chemical leaveners became widely available in the nineteenth century. What distinguishes this version is the overnight sponge, an older habit that lets the batter build acidity and flavor before any soda is added, so the loaf tastes fermented without ever needing yeast, a purchased ingredient that cost money and could fail. Buttermilk was a byproduct, often nearly free where butter was made or sold, and a cook following this recipe was buying only flour, a spoonful of sugar and a little shortening for three loaves of bread.