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Bread

White Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

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 ↓

White 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and lard to the flour.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water and add to the mixture.

  4. Knead into a light dough and let it stand overnight in a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, mold the dough into loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise until they reach the top of the pan.

  3. Bake for 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and aids browning in the crust.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the dough's flavor and structure.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise to the top of the pan. Under-proofed loaves stay dense and heavy, while over-proofed dough can collapse or lose its structure in the oven. Watching the dough's size, not just the clock, helps the loaves bake up light.

“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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