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Bread

The Straight Dough Process

A simple straight dough bread made with yeast, salt, sugar, lard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

The Straight Dough Process

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast, salt, sugar, and lard in lukewarm water.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a medium stiff dough.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth and non-adhesive.

  4. Cover with a cloth and let it rise until doubled in size.

  5. Gently touch the dough; if it sinks, knead it again using minimal flour.

  6. Repeat the rising and kneading process twice.

Shape and rise

  1. Divide the dough into equal pieces and shape into round balls.

  2. Let the balls rest briefly, then shape into long loaves.

  3. Place the loaves in pans and let them rise until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on loaf size.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading and rising the dough. Kneading builds gluten so the dough holds gas, and the sink test shows whether it has risen enough. Adding too much flour while reworking the dough makes the loaves dry and dense.

“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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