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Bread

Rye Bread

A yeast-leavened rye bread loaf made with wheat flour, rye flour, molasses, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the liquid and pour it over the salt, sugar, and fat.

  2. When lukewarm, add the softened yeast and beat well.

  3. Add flour to make a sponge and let it rise until light and foamy.

Make the dough

  1. Add the remaining flour to make a dough and knead until smooth and elastic.

  2. Let it rise until slightly more than double in bulk.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into a loaf and let it rise until a little more than twice its original size.

  2. Bake for 50 minutes to 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.

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. Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Its gluten forms a stretchy network that traps gas and gives the loaf structure.
Rye flour
Contains little gluten, so it adds flavor and a denser, moister crumb.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor, and helps the crust brown.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it ferments actively, and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Cooling the scalded liquid before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the scalded liquid must be lukewarm before the softened yeast goes in. Too hot and the dough will not 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.

More rye bread recipes

Torte 7Indian 6Molasses 5Sourdough 4Graham 3Steamed 3 See all 103 →

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