Skip to main content
Bread

Barley Bread

A yeast-leavened loaf made with wheat and barley flour, milk, water, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Barley 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, wheat flour, water, fat, barley flour, and salt.

  2. Mix in the hot barley mush, yeast cake, and lukewarm water.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth.

  4. Let it rise until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Provides gluten that builds the structure and holds the rise.
Barley flour
Adds flavor and a denser, more tender crumb, since it has little gluten.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise.
Barley mush
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Milk
Adds richness, softness, and help with browning on the crust.
Fat
Tenderizes the crumb and adds richness.

The step that matters

Let it rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and stretch the gluten network. Under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse, so watching for the doubled size matters.

“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.

You might also like

Barley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes