Why it works: Hops and flour work together. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓
Leavened Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the leaven
Boil hops in water for 30 minutes.
Pour the hop water over wheaten bran until moistened.
Add leaven and mix well.
Let the mixture sit in a warm place for 24 hours.
Divide into pieces the size of a hen's egg and dry in a cool, dry place.
Mix and rise
To bake, dissolve 6 leaven balls in warm water.
Strain the mixture into a bread trough and add more warm water.
Mix in enough flour to form a large loaf.
Cover and let rise until the surface cracks.
Dissolve salt in warm water and pour over the mixture.
Add more flour and knead the dough.
Cover and let rise for about an hour.
Shape and bake
Shape into loaves and let rise in a warm room for 30 minutes.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.
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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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hops
- Flavours the leaven with a bitter, aromatic note.
- Leaven
- Ferments the dough so it rises and develops flavour.
- Wheaten bran
- Adds fibre and moisture to the leaven mixture.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its body.
- Leaven balls
- Dried starter that restarts fermentation when baking.
The step that matters
Let the dough rise until the surface cracks. Rising must go far enough to trap gas for a light crumb, but over-proofing weakens the gluten and the loaf can collapse or turn sour.
“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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