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Bread

Rice Bread

A bread made with wheat flour, rice flour, yeast, and lard, boiled and then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Rice Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Combine warm water, yeast, sugar, lard, and wheat flour to make a sponge; beat well.

  2. Let the sponge rise for five hours.

Make the dough

  1. Add warm milk and rice flour to the sponge; mix until it forms a thin paste, adding cold milk as needed.

  2. Boil the mixture for four minutes, similar to boiling starch, and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. If the mixture is not thick enough, add more wheat flour.

  4. Knead the dough and let it rise as you would with regular wheat bread.

  5. If rice flour is unavailable, boil 1 cup of whole rice, then mash and beat it smooth to use instead.

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 + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten, the protein network that gives the dough structure.
Rice flour
Adds starch that thickens the paste and gives a tender, softer crumb.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for four minutes. Boiling gelatinizes the starch so the paste thickens and holds water, similar to making a starch base. Too little boiling leaves the starch unset, so the dough stays loose and rises poorly.

“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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