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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A loaf of bread made from whole wheat and white flour, sweetened with brown sugar and baked after multiple rises.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine entire wheat flour, white flour, brown sugar, warm water, compressed yeast, baking soda, and butter in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Let the dough rise overnight.

  4. Beat the dough down.

  5. Let the dough rise again.

  6. Add salt.

  7. Beat the dough down again.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the dough in pans.

  2. Let the dough rise once more.

  3. Bake the bread.

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. Wheat + walnuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Entire wheat flour
Provides the main structure and the hearty, nutty flavour of the loaf.
White flour
Adds gluten strength, giving the dough a lighter, more elastic crumb.
Compressed yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy texture.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, moisture and browning in the crust.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and contributes richness to the flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, flour, sugar, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More whole wheat bread recipes

Unfermented 3 See all 125 →

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