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Bread

Malted Brown Bread

A wholemeal bread made with malt extract, yeast, salt, and warm water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and malt work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Malted Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Place the wholemeal flour in a clean bowl and make a well in the center.

  2. Dissolve the yeast and malt extract in the warm water, then pour into the well.

  3. Stir in some of the flour.

  4. Cover with a clean cloth and let it sit in a warm place for 2 hours.

  5. Add the salt (rubbed to a fine powder).

  6. Mix in the remaining flour.

  7. Turn the dough onto a floured surface.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in greased pans.

  3. Let the loaves rise for 1 hour.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + malttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 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

Wholemeal flour
Forms the bulk of the dough and provides structure and a nutty, hearty flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Malt extract
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, colour and a malty flavour to the crumb and crust.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast works slowly in cold conditions and too much heat kills it, so the dough needs a warm spot to rise fully. Under-proofing leaves a dense loaf, while over-proofing can collapse the structure.

“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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