Why it works: Bread and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Bread Baking
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough by mixing bread flour, water, yeast, and salt.
Allow the dough to rise until it is slightly less than fully risen.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) for one hour before baking.
Divide the dough into loaves and place them in oblong or brick loaf pans.
Bake four loaves for one and a half hours, or six loaves for one hour and 45 minutes, adjusting the heat slightly towards the end.
For stirred bread or bread with other grains, bake for three hours or longer.
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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Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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
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