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Bread

White Bread

A simple loaf made with flour, salt, sugar, lard, boiling water, and yeast cakes.

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

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 ↓

White Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine flour, salt, sugar, and lard in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling water gradually to make a stiff sponge.

  3. Stir with a fork.

  4. Stir in 1 quart of boiling water.

  5. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm.

  6. Add soaked yeast cakes.

  7. Thicken with flour to form a stiff sponge.

  8. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise overnight in winter.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, knead into a large loaf.

  2. Let the loaf rise again.

  3. Place the loaf in pans.

  4. Let the loaf rise once more.

  5. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Forms the structure of the dough and absorbs water to make it stiff.
Yeast cakes
Ferment the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
Lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and tenderizes the texture.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and adds flavor to the bread.

The step that matters

Cooling the sponge to lukewarm before adding yeast. Boiling water can kill yeast. Cooling the mixture to lukewarm lets the yeast survive and start fermenting, which is what makes the loaf 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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