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Bread

Rye Bread

A rye loaf made with rye flour, white flour, potato yeast, water, salt, and caraway seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and caraway share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 87 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix potato yeast, 1 quart lukewarm water, 3 pounds rye flour, and 1 pound white flour together.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours to rise.

  3. Add ½ gallon lukewarm water, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon caraway seed, and 4 pounds rye flour to the mixture.

  4. Mix together and let rise for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place them close together in a pan.

  2. Let the loaves rise for 1 hour.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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 + carawaytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + ryetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Potato + carawaytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise.
Rye flour
Provides the main structure and dense, earthy flavor of the bread.
White flour
Adds gluten strength, giving the dough more elasticity to hold its rise.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise before baking. The second rise lets the yeast build gas in the shaped loaves. Under-proofed loaves stay dense, while over-proofed loaves may collapse in the oven.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, flour, caraway):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, flour, caraway. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More rye bread recipes

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