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To Make a Dough By the Straight Dough Method

A large batch of bread dough made with flour, sugar, salt, oil or lard, water, and yeast, baked into loaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cottonseed share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make a Dough By the Straight Dough Method

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the salt in a container.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a separate container.

  3. Mix all ingredients until a stiff, elastic mass forms.

  4. Grease one end of the trough well.

  5. Cut over the dough and work in the remaining cottonseed oil or lard.

  6. Knead the dough thoroughly.

  7. Dam it up and set it to prove for about 5 hours.

Punch and rise

  1. Punch the dough down.

  2. Allow it to rise for 40 minutes.

  3. Punch it down again.

  4. Let it rise for another 20 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Scale the dough into 2-pound loaves, rounding them up on the bench.

  2. Let the molded loaves prove for about 45 minutes in the pan or until doubled in size.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour and 10 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 + cottonseedtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 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. Sugar + cottonseedtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 stiff, elastic dough its structure.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and gives a light crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.
Cottonseed oil or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the loaves moist.

The step that matters

Dam it up and set it to prove for about 5 hours. This long first proof lets the yeast build gas and flavor in the dough. Under-proofing leaves a dense loaf, while over-proofing lets the gluten weaken and the dough collapse.

“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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