Skip to main content
Bread

Water Bread

A simple bread made with butter, sugar, salt, yeast cakes, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Water Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine butter, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add ½ cup boiling water to dissolve the mixture.

  3. Add enough lukewarm water to bring the total to 1 pint.

  4. Stir in ½ cup yeast and enough flour (about 3½ to 4 cups) to create a batter that drops from a spoon.

  5. Beat the mixture vigorously.

  6. Cover the mixture.

  7. Let it rise overnight.

Knead and shape

  1. In the morning, add enough flour to make the dough stiff enough to knead.

  2. Knead the dough for 30 minutes.

  3. Cover the dough.

  4. Let it rise in a bowl until light and spongy.

  5. Shape the dough into rolls and loaves.

  6. Bake as usual.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars to produce carbon dioxide, which makes the dough rise and turn light and spongy.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, helping fermentation start and build flavor.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough for 30 minutes. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas yeast produces. Too little kneading leaves a weak, dense crumb, while the stiffness of the dough controls how well it holds its shape and rises.

“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.

You might also like

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