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Bread

White Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

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 ↓

White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm water.

  2. Add melted lard and half the flour; beat until smooth.

  3. Add the remaining flour to form a dough that can be handled, then add salt.

  4. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  5. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place for about 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold into loaves and place in greased bread pans, filling them half full.

  2. Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 40 to 50 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
Lukewarm water
Hydrates the flour and dissolves the yeast so it can activate.

The step that matters

Kneading until smooth and elastic. Kneading aligns gluten strands so the dough holds gas during rising. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes with a dense, crumbly texture.

“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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