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Bread

Pure Household Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, yeast, water, salt, and malt extract.

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 ↓

Pure Household Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour.

  2. Dissolve the yeast, salt, and malt extract in the warm water.

  3. Add the water mixture to the flour and mix to form a firm dough.

  4. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

  5. Knead the dough well, then let it rest for another hour.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 500°F (260°C).

  2. Bake the bread for about 1 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. 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.
Coarse sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for flavour and texture.
Malt extract
Provides sugars for the yeast to feed on, supporting rise and browning.

The step that matters

Knead the dough well. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from fermentation; 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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