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Plain White Family Bread

A simple white bread made with flour, yeast, lard, salt, water, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain White Family Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix 1 pint of flour with ½ pint of hop yeast.

  2. Place ½ gallon of flour in a tray.

  3. Add the yeast mixture to the center of the flour.

  4. Add the walnut-sized piece of lard.

  5. Knead the dough with tepid water and salt to taste.

  6. Work the dough well.

  7. Place the dough in a jar to rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough again with a little flour.

  2. Divide the dough into two loaves.

  3. Place the loaves in a warm area to rise.

  4. Bake the loaves until done.

  5. Wrap the loaves in a coarse towel.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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.
Hop yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the dough, adding flavor.

The step that matters

Work the dough well. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from fermentation. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and yields a dense loaf.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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