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Bread

White Bread

A simple loaf made with flour, lard, salt, yeast, sugar, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

White Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, lard, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix the yeast with a little sugar and a small amount of lukewarm water, then add to the flour.

  3. Gradually add warm water until a nice light dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough well and place it in a warm spot to rise for one hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the dough to tins and let it rise for ten minutes.

  2. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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.

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. Flour + sugartop 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Coarse sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for flavor and structure.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough well. Kneading aligns and develops the gluten proteins in the flour, creating the elastic network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense.

“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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