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Malted Brown Bread

A wholemeal bread made with malt extract and yeast, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and malt work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Malted Brown 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.

Make the sponge

  1. Place the wholemeal flour in a clean bowl and make a well in the center.

  2. Dissolve the yeast and malt extract in warm water, pour into the well, and stir in about ⅓ of the flour.

  3. Cover with a clean cloth and let it sit in a warm place for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. After 2 hours, add the salt (rubbed to a fine powder) and mix in the remaining flour.

  2. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, divide into loaves, and place in greased pans.

  3. Let the loaves rise for 1 hour, then bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + malttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the loaf, with bran giving it a hearty texture.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Malt extract
Feeds the yeast and adds a malty sweetness and brown colour to the crumb and crust.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise before adding the salt. Salt slows yeast activity, so keeping it out of the initial sponge lets the yeast ferment vigorously first. Adding it later, once the dough has developed, keeps the rise strong and even.

“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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