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Bread

Ralston's Health Bread

A simple bread made with wheat flour, baking soda, yeast, and warm water, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ralston's Health 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. In a large bowl, combine the wheat flour, baking soda, warm water, and salt.

  2. Stir in the yeast until well mixed.

  3. Let the mixture rise until doubled in size.

  4. Knead the dough using the Ralston flour until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into two loaves and let them rise again.

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

  3. Bake the loaves for one 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the main structure of the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to help the loaves rise.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes airy.
Ralston flour
Used for kneading, keeping the dough from sticking while it becomes smooth.

“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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