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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with whole wheat flour, molasses, sugar, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, stir together the water, molasses, butter, salt, sugar, and baking soda with 1 quart of the flour.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add the remaining flour and stir until the dough drops from the spoon.

  4. Cover and let the dough stand overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, stir the dough down and transfer it to baking tins.

  2. Let it rise, then bake 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 + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Entire wheat flour
Provides the structure of the loaf and gives it its hearty, nutty texture.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaf rise and become airy.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color and flavor to the crumb and crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to give additional lift and a darker color.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough stand overnight. The long, cool rest lets the yeast ferment slowly, developing flavor and rise; too short a rest leaves the bread dense and under-flavored.

“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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