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Proportions for White Bread

A recipe for making white bread dough and baking loaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Proportions for White Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Heat the liquid, then add salt, sugar, and lard; cool to lukewarm.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm water and add to the mixture.

  3. Add flour to make a batter sponge and beat thoroughly until bubbles form.

  4. If setting overnight, cover and let rise in a warm place until foamy.

Knead and rise

  1. Add flour to make a dough just stiff enough to handle.

  2. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board and knead until elastic, adding flour only to prevent sticking.

  3. Return the dough to a bowl, moisten the cover, and let rise until doubled in bulk.

  4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead slightly to break up large gas bubbles.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide and shape the dough into loaves.

  2. Place in greased pans and cover lightly; let rise in a warm place until nearly doubled.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F for 30 minutes for individual loaves or 50 to 60 minutes for a 1 lb. loaf.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Liquid
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for a firmer dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so fermentation starts quickly and browns the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading to elasticity before the first rise. Kneading stretches and aligns gluten strands until the dough is elastic. Under-kneaded dough traps gas poorly, so the loaves rise weakly and have a dense, crumbly texture.

“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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