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Bread

Graham or Entire Wheat Bread

A stiff dough bread made from graham flour, molasses, and saleratus, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Graham or Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve saleratus in a little hot water and stir into the molasses until it foams.

  2. Combine the foamed mixture with the graham flour and salt.

  3. Add enough milk to make the dough as stiff as cake batter.

Bake

  1. Divide the dough into two pans.

  2. Bake until done 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.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the loaf, with its bran giving a coarse, hearty texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and reacts with the saleratus to help the bread rise.
Saleratus
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas when it reacts with the acidic molasses so the bread rises.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir the saleratus into the molasses until it foams. Saleratus must react with the acidic molasses to release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully and mixing it in well before adding flour spreads the gas evenly, so the loaf rises uniformly instead of in patches.

“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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