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 ↓
Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Put the flour and salt into a large bowl.
Cream the yeast and sugar together, then add the water and mix well.
Place the dough in a warm place to rise for two hours, or overnight.
Shape and bake
After rising, knead the dough well and form it into loaves.
Allow the loaves to rise for half an hour.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
- Yeast
- Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, helping it become active and start fermenting quickly.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast and sugar.
The step that matters
Knead the dough well after rising. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from fermentation. Under-kneaded dough bakes up dense and may collapse or tear.
“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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