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Bread

Plain White Family Bread

A simple white bread made with flour, yeast, lard, salt, and tepid water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain White Family Bread

2 loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. In the afternoon, mix 1 pint of flour with ½ pint of hop yeast.

  2. At night, place ½ gallon of flour in a tray and add the yeast mixture in the center.

Mix and rise

  1. Add the walnut-sized piece of lard.

  2. Knead the mixture with tepid water and 2 teaspoons of salt until well combined.

  3. Place the dough in a jar to rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. The next morning, knead the dough again with a little flour.

  2. Divide the dough into 2 loaves and place them in a warm area to rise.

  3. Bake the loaves until done, then wrap them in a coarse towel.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Hop yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Kneading the mixture with water and salt. Kneading develops gluten, which gives the dough its stretch and structure. Salt strengthens the gluten and slows yeast activity, so the mixture should be kneaded until well combined before the overnight rise.

“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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