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Hovis or Wholemeal Bread

A simple wholemeal loaf made with Hovis flour, yeast, sugar, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hovis or Wholemeal 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.

Prepare the sponge

  1. In a basin, combine the wholemeal flour and salt.

  2. Cream the yeast and sugar together until liquid.

  3. In a saucepan, heat the milk and water until just tepid, then pour over the yeast mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture into the center of the flour mixture.

  5. Cover and let it stand in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Mix the ingredients to form a dough.

  2. Transfer the dough to a well-greased small loaf or cake tin.

  3. Let it rise for 40 minutes until it reaches the top of the tin.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal flour
Provides the bulk of the structure and a nutty, hearty flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and aids browning.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and the dough can be worked.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until it reaches the top of the tin. Wholemeal flour has bran that cuts through gluten, so the dough rises more slowly and less strongly than white flour. Letting it fully rise before baking gives a lighter loaf, while under-proofing leaves it 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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