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Bread

Indian Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made from rye flour, cornmeal, molasses, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Bread

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix rye flour and cornmeal with salt and baking soda.

  2. Scald the mixture with boiling water and let it cool.

  3. Add molasses and yeast to the cooled mixture.

  4. Let the dough rise for 4 hours.

Bake

  1. Shape into loaves and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30‑40 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.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Provides the main structure of the loaf, though it has less gluten than wheat flour.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a coarse, crumbly texture to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep color to the crust and crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, leavening the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to add rising and darken the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the cooled mixture before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or stressed by very hot liquid, so the scalded mixture must cool before the yeast and molasses go in. Adding yeast too early can stop the dough from rising properly.

“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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