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Bread

Oatmeal Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with rolled oats, molasses, lard, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Bread

Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oatmeal 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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine rolled oats, molasses, lard, and boiling water in a bowl and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, add salt and yeast and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in white flour until a dough forms.

  4. Let the dough rise in a mixing bowl until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the dough to greased pans and let it rise again until ready to bake.

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

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. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Oats + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oats + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 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

Rolled oats
Add body and a hearty, tender crumb to the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a darker browning in the crust.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps it moist.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the loaf its airy structure.
White flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding yeast. Boiling water kills yeast cells. Letting the oat mixture cool before adding the yeast keeps them alive so the dough can rise.

“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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