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Bread

Quaker Bread with Ferment

A quick bread made with ferment, sugar or molasses, salt, lard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Quaker Bread with Ferment

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the ferment, sugar (or molasses), coarse sea salt, and lard.

  2. Gradually add strong patent flour to form a straight dough.

  3. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Scale and mold the dough into pans.

  2. Allow the dough to proof until it has risen again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F to 400°F 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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Ferment
Leavens the dough, causing it to rise as it develops.
Strong patent flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar or molasses
Feeds the ferment and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Coarse sea salt
Controls fermentation pace and adds flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Rising depends on the ferment's activity and temperature. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough loses structure and can collapse in the oven.

“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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