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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A loaf of bread made with whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix warm water, yeast cake, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add entire wheat flour and stir until combined.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 3 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Stir it down and pour into loaf pans, leaving room for rising.

  2. Proof for 30 minutes.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes for one-pound loaves.

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. Sugar + wheattop 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
Gluten proteins form the network that gives the loaf its structure.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 3 hours. The yeast needs this long fermentation to produce enough gas and develop flavour. Cutting the standing time short leaves the dough under-risen and the loaf dense.

“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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