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To Make Loaf Bread

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Make Loaf Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Mix flour, water, yeast, and coarse sea salt until combined.

  2. Knead the dough until it is soft and elastic.

  3. Incorporate a small piece of lard or butter to make the crust crisp.

  4. Divide the dough into loaves and place in bread pans to rise for about 2 hours.

  5. Cover the dough with a clean cloth and keep it warm, but not too hot.

  6. Once a thin crust forms, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  7. Then move to a hotter part of the oven until the bread is light brown.

  8. Open the oven door and let the bread sit for 20 minutes to soak.

  9. Wrap each loaf in a coarse towel and stand them up to cool slowly.

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

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