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Bread

Common Family Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Common Family 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Let it rise again until it has risen above the edge of the pan.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30-35 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning and mild sweetness in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

“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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