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Straight Dough Bread

A yeast-leavened corn flour bread made with salt, sugar, lard, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Straight Dough 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine 1 pound of corn flour, 3 ounces of Fleischmann's yeast, ½ pound of coarse sea salt, ½ pound of sugar, and ¼ pound of lard.

  2. Add enough water to form a dough that is not too stiff.

  3. Knead the dough until it becomes light, then let it rise.

  4. Repeat the kneading and rising process at least twice.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into pieces, shape them into rounds, and place 12 pieces in a greased pan.

  2. Cover the loaves with flour and let them rise for a short time.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn flour
Forms the main body of the bread, giving it its characteristic corn flavor and crumb.
Fleischmann's yeast
Produces gas during rising, making the dough light and airy.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the bread moist.

The step that matters

Kneading and rising repeated at least twice. Repeated kneading and rising develops gluten and builds gas structure, so the dough becomes light. Corn flour has little gluten, so under-working the dough can leave the loaves dense and crumbly.

“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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