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Bread

Light Crispi Crusty Cottage Bread

A light, crispy crusted cottage bread made from flour, yeast, malt extract, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and malt work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Crispi Crusty Cottage Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ferment

  1. In a large tub, mix ½ lb malt extract, 2 lbs flour, ½ lb yeast, and 20 quarts water at 86°F (30°C) to create a ferment.

  2. Let the ferment sit until it subsides, then strain it into a trough.

Make the batter

  1. Add 20 quarts more water at 84°F to 90°F (29°C to 32°C) and stir in about 56 lbs of flour to form a batter.

  2. Allow the batter to rise for about two hours.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve 2 lbs salt in 16 quarts warm water and stir this into the sponge to form a dry, firm dough.

  2. Let the dough rest for half an hour, then shape it into loaves.

Bake

  1. Bake in a sharp oven for about 45 minutes after closing the oven door.

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 + malttop 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

Fine white flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars, producing gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Malt extract
Supplies sugars that feed the yeast and help the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the ferment sit until it subsides. The ferment is ready once yeast has risen and begun to fall back, showing it is active and full of gas. Straining it too early or too late weakens the leavening that the batter and dough depend on.

“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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