Skip to main content
Main

Good Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Good Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Stir the lukewarm water into the center of the flour.

  2. Add the salt and sugar, then mix in the yeast.

  3. Add more lukewarm water as needed to form a good dough, not too stiff.

  4. Knead the dough thoroughly with both hands.

  5. Sprinkle a little flour over the top, cover with a bread cloth, and then a blanket.

  6. Let it rise in a warm place for 4 to 5 hours.

  7. Once risen, knead again for 15 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide into loaves suitable for the pans, cover, and let rise again.

  2. When ready, bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 + sugartop 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Lukewarm water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough thoroughly. Kneading aligns and stretches gluten strands, giving the bread elasticity and an open crumb. Under-kneaded dough bakes up dense and may collapse as it rises.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes