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White Bread

A simple loaf made with flour, salt, sugar, lard, boiling water, and yeast cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

White Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar, and lard.

  2. Add boiling water gradually to make a stiff sponge, stirring with a fork.

  3. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm, then add the soaked yeast cakes.

  4. Thicken with more flour to form a stiff sponge.

  5. Set the bowl in a warm place to rise overnight during winter.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, knead the dough into a large loaf.

  2. Let it rise again, then place it in pans.

  3. Allow it to rise once more, then bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as the dough sets.
Yeast cakes
Produce gas that makes the dough rise and gives the loaf an airy crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge cool until lukewarm before adding yeast. Boiling water kills yeast cells, so the mixture must cool to a warm temperature before the yeast is added. If it is too hot, the yeast will die and the bread will not rise.

“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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