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Plain Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, salt, butter or lard, yeast, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour with the salt.

  2. Rub in the butter or lard.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water with the sugar.

  4. Add the dissolved yeast to the flour.

  5. Stir in enough water to make a soft dough.

  6. Turn the dough onto a floured board.

  7. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes.

  8. Place the dough back in the bowl.

  9. Cover the dough.

  10. Let it rise overnight.

Shape and rise

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured board.

  2. Knead for 5 minutes.

  3. Put the dough into well-buttered pans.

  4. Fill the corners.

  5. Evening the top.

  6. Cover the dough.

  7. Let it rise until ready to bake.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until thoroughly cooked with a light brown crust.

  2. Remove the loaves from the pan.

  3. Wrap in a clean towel.

  4. Stand the loaves on end against a sieve or pan.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and the yeast can activate.

The step that matters

Knead the dough. Kneading develops the gluten network, which traps the gas from the yeast. Too little kneading leaves a dense, weak loaf that 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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