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Bread

Water Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with flour, sugar, salt, lard, water, and yeast.

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

Water Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in a portion of the lukewarm water.

  2. Make a hole in the center of the sifted flour and add the dissolved yeast and remaining water.

  3. Knead the mixture until the bowl is clean.

  4. Butter the bowl. Return the dough to the bowl.

  5. Let it rise until doubled in size.

  6. Cut down the dough.

  7. Let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in pans.

  3. Let the loaves rise until doubled in size.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 to 50 minutes.

  5. Check that the bread springs back after being pressed.

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 + 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

Flour
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten network builds and holds the gas bubbles.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Lukewarm water
Hydrates the flour to form dough and activates the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast for fermentation and adds a little sweetness and browning.
Lard or dripping
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the loaves rise until doubled in size. Under-proofed loaves stay dense and may collapse or split in the oven, while over-proofed dough loses its gas-holding strength and can sink. Doubling in size is the visual sign that the yeast has produced enough gas.

“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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