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Bread

Oatmeal Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with oatmeal, molasses, and flour, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the oatmeal with enough hot water to thoroughly wet it and cook in a double boiler for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the molasses and warm water.

  3. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough and mix in the yeast.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. The next morning, knead it down with a spoon and place it in pans.

  2. Let it rise, then bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for over 1 hour.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Absorbs the hot water and adds body and a hearty, chewy crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the loaf.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaf rise.

The step that matters

Overnight stand. The dough needs time to ferment slowly so the yeast can develop flavor and lift. Stopping it early leaves a dense loaf with less 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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