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Bread

Brown Bread

A loaf of brown bread made with rye flour, cornmeal, optional flours, yeast, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the rye flour, cornmeal, and any optional flours you choose to add.

  2. In a separate bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in warm milk or water. Let it sit until frothy.

  3. Combine the yeast mixture with the flour mixture. Add salt and mix until a dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about 10 minutes until smooth.

Rise and bake

  1. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  4. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Wheat + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Rye + barleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Forms the dough's structure while giving the loaf its dense, earthy flavour.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse texture and golden colour to the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast, forming a workable dough.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast gas expands the gluten network, giving lightness. Rye has little gluten, so an underproofed or overproofed dough can bake up dense or collapse.

“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 brown bread recipes

Boston 349Steamed 107Pudding 51New England 20Ice Cream 14Biscuits 11 See all 420 →

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