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Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and tepid water, baked at 400°F then 300°F.

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 ↓

Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yeast

  1. In a basin, combine yeast and sugar, creaming them together with a wooden spoon until liquid.

  2. Add tepid water and mix well.

  3. Place flour in a large basin, make a well in the center, and strain the yeast mixture into it.

  4. Work in a little flour from the sides and let it rise for 20 minutes until bubbles form.

Knead and shape

  1. Knead in the remaining flour until smooth, cover, and let rise for 2 hours.

  2. Knead the dough on a floured board for 15 minutes.

  3. Divide the dough into two smooth balls without cracks.

  4. If using tins, flour them, place the dough inside, cut or prick the top, and let rise for 30 minutes.

  5. For cottage loaves, divide each piece into two, shape into balls, and stack the smaller ball on top of the larger one, pressing a finger into the top.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, then reduce to 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Once done, cool the bread on its side.

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Tepid water
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast without killing it.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast at the start, helping it become active and bubbly.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before baking. Rising lets yeast produce gas that stretches the gluten network. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse.

“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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