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 ↓
Yeast Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 100°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the dough
Sift the flour into a bread pan.
Reserve 1 cup of flour for kneading.
Add salt, sugar, yeast, and warm water to the flour.
Beat well with a strong spoon until mixed.
Turn the dough onto a floured board.
Knead the dough for 20 to 30 minutes.
Rub softened lard over the dough.
Cover the dough tightly.
Place the dough in a warm area to rise for 8 to 9 hours.
In the morning, shape the dough into loaves or rolls.
Bake and serve
Let loaves rise for 1 hour in a warm place (90°F to 100°F) or rolls for 1.5 hours.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned, about 45 to 60 minutes for loaves and 30 minutes for rolls.
If making French rolls, bake for 15 minutes.
Remove bread from pans.
Let bread cool against something until cool.
Store bread in a clean, dry container.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaf its structure.
- Yeast
- Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments sugars, causing the dough to rise.
- Warm water
- Hydrates the flour to form gluten and activates the yeast.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning in the crust.
The step that matters
Knead the dough for 20 to 30 minutes. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas produced by yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises weakly and bakes with 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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