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Bread

Oatmeal Bread

A simple bread made with rolled oats, molasses, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Bread

Why it works: Oats and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 258 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Oatmeal Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and mix

  1. Combine rolled oats and boiling water; let stand for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in salt, molasses, yeast, and warm water.

Shape and bake

  1. Add enough bread flour to form a very stiff dough.

  2. Transfer the dough to deep, narrow pans.

  3. Let the dough rise until light, then bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Oats + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Oats + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oats + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Bread and flour 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

Rolled oats
Soak up water to add body, moisture, and a tender, chewy crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, and a darker color to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Bread flour
Its gluten forms the structure that holds the risen loaf together.

The step that matters

Adding the bread flour. Flour must be added until the dough is stiff but still workable. Too little leaves a slack dough that cannot hold its shape, while too much makes the bread dense and dry, since gluten and starch set the final texture.

“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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