Skip to main content
Bread

Quick Bread-making

A simple quick bread made with boiling and cold water, flour, yeast, salt, and baked at 400°F.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Quick Bread-making

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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine boiling water and cold water in a large bowl.

  2. Add flour to make a batter and let it cool until warm.

  3. Stir in yeast and salt, then add enough flour to knead into a smooth dough.

  4. Place the dough in a well-greased pan.

  5. Cover with a dish in winter or a cloth in summer and let it rest overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, shape the dough into loaves, using minimal flour to handle.

  2. Grease the tops and sides of each loaf with butter or lard.

  3. Let the loaves rise until small holes appear when pressed gently.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 batter and dough structure that holds the gas and shapes the loaves.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and adds flavour to the dough.
Butter or sweet lard
Greasing the loaf tops and sides adds fat that softens the crust and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise until small holes appear. Rising is driven by yeast gas; stopping too early leaves dense bread, while letting it go too long lets the structure collapse and the loaves turn flat or 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.

You might also like

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