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Bread

Malt Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with flour, wheat meal, maize meal, rice flour, malt extract, and lime water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 423 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Malt Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sponge

  1. Heat the water to 90°F (32°C).

  2. Dissolve the malt extract and yeast in the warm water.

  3. Stir in the wheat meal, maize meal, and rice flour.

  4. Allow the mixture to ferment for 2 hours in a warm place.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Stir in the lime water and salt.

  2. Make dough with the remaining flour.

  3. Let the dough prove for 30 minutes.

  4. Mould the dough into desired sizes and let it prove for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderately hot oven (350°F / 175°C) until thoroughly baked.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Rice + limetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Wheat + limetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + limetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 loaf its structure and crumb.
Wheat meal
Adds bulk, fibre and a sturdier, more rustic structure to the crumb.
Extract of malt
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and contributes sweetness and malty flavour and browning.
Yeast
Ferments sugars to produce gas that leavens the dough.
Lime water
Alkaline liquid that modifies dough acidity and flavour during fermentation.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to ferment for 2 hours in a warm place. Yeast activity depends on temperature and time. Too cool and the sponge rises slowly, too long and it over-ferments and weakens, so the dough loses leavening power before baking.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, wheat, rice, malt):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat, rice, malt. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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