Why it works: Flour and malt work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Bread-making
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
Add 50-60% water to the flour and mix in the yeast.
Knead the dough until well combined and elastic.
Let the dough rest until it begins to swell.
Shape and bake
Divide the dough into loaves and let them rise again.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Bake the loaves until the bottom crust is hard and sounds resonant when tapped.
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.
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Flour + malttop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together260 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1 recipe
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wheaten flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so gluten can develop and the dough becomes elastic.
- Leavening matter (yeast)
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the bread its airy crumb.
The step that matters
Baking until the bottom crust is hard. Baking has to continue until the crust is fully set and dry; a pale or soft base means the loaf is underbaked inside, since the interior starch has not finished setting.
“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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