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Bread

Quaker Bread

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

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 ↓

Quaker 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 lukewarm water and yeast until dissolved.

  2. Add salt, sugar, lard, and malt extract and mix well.

  3. Gradually add enough flour to form a slack dough.

  4. Let the dough rest for 3 hours.

  5. Cut the dough and let it rest for another hour.

  6. Cut the dough again and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Punch down the dough, scale it into portions, and mold into loaves.

  2. Place 2 loaves in each pan.

  3. Allow the loaves to proof slightly before baking.

  4. Bake in a solid 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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Malt + wheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

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

  5. Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes sweetness and browning during baking.
Malt extract
Supplies sugars for yeast fermentation and aids browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Resting the dough before baking. Each rest lets the yeast keep fermenting and the gluten relax. Cutting or punching the dough too early knocks out gas and can leave dense loaves.

“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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