Skip to main content
Bread

Rye Bread

A yeast‑raised rye bread made with rye flour, boiling water, molasses, and wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rye and wheat 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 ↓

Rye Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the rye flour with boiling water, stirring constantly until thick enough for a spoon to stand upright.

  2. Add yeast and molasses to the cooled mixture. Stir well.

  3. Let it rise overnight.

Knead and shape

  1. Add wheat flour to the mixture.

  2. Knead the mixture.

  3. Let it rise.

  4. Knead it down again.

  5. Let it rise once more.

  6. Shape into loaves.

Bake

  1. Place the loaves in the oven. Watch carefully to prevent burning.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Forms the thick, sticky base and gives the bread its dense, earthy structure.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture so the dough rises and becomes lighter.
Molasses
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, color and a deep flavor.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten, which gives the kneaded dough more elasticity and structure.

The step that matters

Watch the loaves in the oven. Molasses and sugars brown and scorch quickly at high heat, so the loaves can burn on the outside before the interior is fully baked.

“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.

More rye bread recipes

Torte 7Indian 6Molasses 5Sourdough 4Graham 3Steamed 3 See all 103 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes