Why it works: Flour and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Letter on Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the dough
Sift the flour into the bread bowl after measuring it.
Take out a cupful of the flour to use in kneading the bread.
Make a hole in the flour, not quite to the bottom of the bowl.
Mix part of the lukewarm water and the yeast together.
Pour the water and yeast into the hole a little at a time, mixing flour and water gradually toward the middle until it forms a dough.
Add salt, sugar, lard and the remaining water, which must be lukewarm. Mix thoroughly.
Knead and rise
Spread flour on the board and turn the dough out on it.
Knead until none of the dough sticks to your hands, from twenty to thirty minutes.
Put the dough back in the bowl.
Rub melted lard over the top of the dough.
Cover closely with a clean cloth and set in a warm place to rise.
Shape and bake
When the dough has risen to double its size, make it into loaves and put them in pans.
Let the shaped dough rise again.
Prick or cut the top across so the crust will not bind.
Bake in a quick oven, on the bottom rack, until a broom straw passed through the loaf comes out dry.
When taken from the oven, place the loaf on its side or top crust so steam can escape.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
Counts 2 of 4 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Water | not in our table | 0 |
| Cake | not in our table | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the dough's structure as its proteins build gluten when kneaded.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the bread its light texture.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast to activate it.
The step that matters
Let the dough rise to double its size before shaping. Yeast gas expands the dough as it rises. Shaping too early gives a dense loaf, while letting it over-rise can weaken the structure so it collapses in the oven.
“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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