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Bread

Compressed Yeast Bread

A yeast bread made with compressed yeast, flour, water, salt, and buttered tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Compressed Yeast 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 sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 pint of lukewarm water and stir in enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Cover the bowl with a thick cloth and let it rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes until foamy.

Make the dough

  1. Stir in the salt dissolved in a little warm water, then add the remaining flour and enough warm water to make a stiff dough.

  2. Knead the dough for 5 to 10 minutes, then divide it into loaves and knead each loaf again.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the loaves in buttered baking tins, cover with a cloth, and let them rise until doubled in size.

  2. 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

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and lets the loaves hold their shape.
Compressed yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and activates the yeast.
Salt
Strengthens the gluten structure and controls the pace of yeast fermentation.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise until doubled. Under-proofed loaves stay dense and heavy, while over-proofed dough can collapse or bake up coarse. Yeast gas must fill the shaped dough before the oven sets its structure.

“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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