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Bread

Oat Flake Brown Bread

A bread made with oat flakes, molasses, and a white bread sponge.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oat Flake Brown 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. Pour 2 cups of boiling water over 2 cups of oat flakes and let cool.

  2. Combine the cooled oat mixture with 1 pint of white bread sponge and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  3. Add ½ cup of molasses and enough white flour until the mixture is too stiff to stir with a spoon.

  4. Let the dough rise in a bowl until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the dough to bread pans and let it rise again.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 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. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

White bread sponge
Provides a fermented starter that makes the dough rise and gives it flavour.
Oat flakes
Add bulk and a tender, moist crumb once soaked in boiling water.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, a darker colour and moisture to the loaf.
White flour
Builds the gluten structure that holds the loaf together as it rises and bakes.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be added until the dough is stiff but still mixed evenly. Too little leaves a slack, poorly structured loaf, while too much makes a dense, dry bread because the gluten becomes overworked and the crumb tightens.

“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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