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Bread

Communion Bread

A simple stiff dough bread baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Communion Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and butter.

  3. Add enough water to form a stiff dough.

  4. Divide the dough into two pieces.

  5. Roll each piece to a thickness of heavy pie crust.

Shape and bake

  1. Place on white paper and cut into strips ¼ inch wide.

  2. Bake between papers in the preheated oven.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with water.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the dough slightly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and contributes to its texture.

The step that matters

Rolling to an even thickness. Dough rolled to uneven thickness bakes unevenly, so thin spots can scorch while thick spots stay doughy. Keeping each piece an even heavy pie-crust thickness helps the strips bake through uniformly.

“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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