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Quaker Oats Bread

A yeast bread made with Quaker Oats, flour, molasses, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Quaker Oats Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oat base

  1. Pour 2 cups of boiling water over the Quaker Oats and let the mixture stand until lukewarm.

  2. Combine salt, sugar, butter, and molasses in a mixing bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture over 2 cups of hot water.

  4. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup of lukewarm water and add the dissolved yeast mixture to the bowl.

  5. Stir in the Quaker Oats.

Make and rise the dough

  1. Add flour one cup at a time while beating constantly.

  2. Dredge the molding board with the remaining cup of flour.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  4. Set the dough to rise in a warm place until it doubles in bulk.

  5. Cut down the risen dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves, each weighing about 1 pound.

  2. Set the loaves to rise again until they double in bulk.

  3. Bake the loaves for 1 hour.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oats + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Quaker oats
Adds a hearty texture and soaks up water to give the loaf body.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide so the dough rises and becomes light.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a darker color to the crumb and crust.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Kneading aligns gluten strands so the dough can trap gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes with a dense, crumbly texture.

“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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