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Bye Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, butter, sugar, salt, wheat and rye flours, baked at 300°F for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye 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 ↓

Bye Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine the milk, butter, brown sugar and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Scald the mixture and let it cool until lukewarm.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast and enough wheat flour to create a thick batter.

  4. Beat the batter thoroughly.

  5. Cover the batter and let it stand in a warm place until it becomes light.

Shape and rise

  1. Add rye flour to form a soft dough that can be kneaded lightly.

  2. Place the dough in a pan and let it rise until it doubles in size.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 300 °F (150 °C).

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours, starting with a hot oven for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the heat without chilling the bread.

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 + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the thick batter that starts the fermentation and gives the loaf its main structure.
Rye flour
Adds body and a denser, softer crumb to the dough alongside the wheat flour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter and dough light and allows them to rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning on the crust.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and a mild molasses flavor.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and adds richness.

The step that matters

Starting in a hot oven, then reducing the heat. A brief blast of high heat at the start gives the loaf a quick oven spring, while lowering the heat afterward lets the interior cook through without over-browning the crust. Chilling would collapse the 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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