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Bread

Barley Bread

A dense bread made with barley meal, wheat flour, and rye flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Make a sponge with the wheat flour as you would for rye bread.

  2. Keep the dough rather tight.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Barley + ryetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure, helping the sponge and dough hold their shape.
Rye flour
Forms the bulk of the dough, giving the bread its body and characteristic flavor.
Barley meal
Adds flavor and a slightly tender crumb to the loaf.

The step that matters

Keep the dough rather tight. A stiffer dough holds gas bubbles better during rising and baking. Rye flour has little gluten, so a looser dough can spread and bake up dense and flat.

“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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