Skip to main content
Bread

Sponge Bread No. 1

A yeast-based bread made with a sponge starter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Sponge Bread No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Soak 1 cake of yeast foam in 1 pint of lukewarm water (80°F) for about 1 hour until dissolved.

  2. Mix the dissolved yeast with 1 quart of flour to form a medium sponge.

  3. Cover the sponge and let it rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, mix the sponge with 1 pint of warm water, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 2 tablespoons lard.

  2. Add 2 quarts of flour and mix to form a medium dough.

  3. Knead the dough for about 15 minutes and let it rise for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Knead the dough down, let it rise for about 1 hour, then mold into loaves.

Bake

  1. Let the loaves rise until doubled in size and bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast foam
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaves their crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Overnight sponge rise. The sponge must rise fully in a warm place so the yeast is active. A weak sponge leaves too little gas to lift the later dough, so the loaves turn out 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.

More sponge bread recipes

Milk 6Potato 6 See all 21 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes