Skip to main content
Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A simple whole wheat loaf made with flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Entire Wheat 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine warm water, sugar, and yeast in a bowl. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes until frothy.

  2. Add entire wheat flour and salt to the yeast mixture. Stir until a dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about 10 minutes until smooth.

Rise and shape

  1. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl.

  2. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

  3. Shape the dough into a loaf. Place the loaf in a greased loaf pan.

  4. Let it rise again for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Entire wheat flour
Provides the structure of the loaf and a denser, nuttier crumb than white flour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour to form dough and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.
Salt
Strengthens the gluten and controls the speed of yeast fermentation.

The step that matters

Knead until smooth. Kneading develops gluten, which traps the gas yeast produces. Whole wheat flour has bran that cuts gluten strands, so under-kneading can leave a dense, crumbly loaf.

“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.

More whole wheat bread recipes

Unfermented 3 See all 125 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipes