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Bread

Plain Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot 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 large pan, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Cream the yeast with the sugar, then add ½ cup of tepid water and mix well.

  3. Add the remaining 2 cups of tepid water to the yeast mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture onto the flour and mix to form a dough.

  5. Knead the dough well and let it rise for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 2 loaves and let them rise for another 30 minutes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 40 to 60 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 + 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 dough structure that traps gas and holds the loaf's shape.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Tepid water
Hydrates the flour to form gluten and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Kneading and rising the dough. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas yeast produces. Under-kneading gives a weak, dense loaf, while the rise lets the yeast build the gas that lightens the crumb.

“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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