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Bread

Household Bread

A simple bread made with flour, warm water, yeast, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Household Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 110°F (43°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Warm the water to about 110°F (43°C).

  2. Mix 1½ pints of warm water with the yeast and let it sit to settle.

  3. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the yeast mixture.

  4. Stir the mixture until well combined.

Rise, shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough until smooth, then let it rise for 2-3 hours.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves and place in tins.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and holds the gas produced during rising.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough until smooth. Kneading aligns and stretches the gluten proteins in the flour. A well-developed network traps the gas from the yeast, so the loaf rises well and keeps an even crumb. Under-kneaded dough can rise poorly and 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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