Skip to main content
Bread

Easy Entire Wheat Bread

A simple whole wheat bread made with yeast, sugar, salt, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Easy Entire Wheat Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour, sugar, and salt together.

  2. Mix with enough warm water to make a stiff batter.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in 2 tablespoons of warm water and add it to the batter.

  4. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Let it rise overnight.

  2. In the morning, beat the mixture again.

  3. Put the batter in greased pans and let it rise again.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Entire wheat flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise again in the pans before baking. Whole wheat bran cuts gluten strands and slows gas trapping, so the dough needs enough time to rise fully. An underproofed loaf stays dense.

“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.

More whole wheat bread recipes

Unfermented 3 See all 125 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipes