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Excellent Light Bread

A simple yeast bread with optional lard or butter for greasing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Excellent Light Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Soak the yeast in warm water for 1 hour.

  2. Mix flour and a little additional warm water to create a batter.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight in a cool place in summer or near the fire in winter.

Make the dough

  1. Sift flour equal to the batter amount. Mix with 1 pint of warm water.

  2. Add salt and optional lard.

  3. Knead until smooth.

  4. Knead again after 15-20 minutes.

  5. Let it rise until light.

  6. Knead again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into small loaves.

  2. Grease each loaf with lard or butter. Do not grease the pan.

  3. Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) until thoroughly done.

  4. Grease the top of the loaf with butter after 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the flour, producing gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and holds the gas bubbles.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for a firmer, more even crumb.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives the crust a richer surface when brushed on.

The step that matters

Overnight batter rise. The batter must ferment slowly at a cool, steady temperature. Too warm and it over-ferments and turns sour; too cool and the yeast stays sluggish, so the dough won't develop enough gas for a light loaf.

“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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