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Bread

Bran Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with fine wheat flour, bran, lard, sugar, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bran Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a straight dough with the flour, bran, lard, sugar, yeast, water, and salt.

  2. Allow the dough to rest for one hour.

  3. Knead the dough thoroughly, then knead again after half an hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Scale the dough into 2-pound pieces.

  2. Place in covered tins and allow to prove until it rises about 1 inch from the top, approximately 35 minutes.

  3. Bake with covers on.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Bran
Adds fibre and a coarser, denser texture to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise during proving and baking.

The step that matters

Knead the dough thoroughly, then knead again after half an hour. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps gas. Bran cuts through gluten strands, so thorough kneading, plus the second knead after resting, helps the loaf hold its rise.

“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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