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Bread

Plain White Family Bread

A simple white bread made with flour, yeast, lard, salt, and tepid water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain White Family Bread

2 loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. In the afternoon, mix 1 pint of flour with ½ pint of hop yeast.

Mix and rise

  1. At night, place ½ gallon of flour in a tray and add the yeast mixture in the center with the lard.

  2. Knead the mixture with tepid salted water until well combined.

  3. Let the dough rise in a jar overnight.

  4. The next morning, knead the dough again with a little flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide into 2 loaves and place in a warm area to rise.

  2. Bake the loaves until done, then wrap in a coarse towel.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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

Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its body.
Hop yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and gains a light, airy crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light loaf. Rising too briefly leaves the bread dense, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse and taste sour.

“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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