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Bread

Rye and Oatmeal Bread

A yeast bread made with rye flour, oatmeal mush, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rye and Oatmeal Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Mix water, salt, milk, yeast cake, oatmeal mush, and 8 cups of rye flour in a large bowl.

  2. Knead the mixture until smooth, then let it rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead down the dough, adding 2 more cups of rye flour.

  2. Let the dough rise again, then bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until golden.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rye flour
Forms the bulk of the structure, though it builds less gluten than wheat flour, so the loaf is denser.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide during the long rise, which leavens the dense rye dough.
Oatmeal mush
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb, helping the loaf stay tender.
Milk
Adds richness and helps browning on the crust through milk sugars.

The step that matters

Kneading and rising the rye dough. Rye flour has little gluten, so the dough is sticky and slow to rise. Kneading until smooth and allowing a full rise gives the yeast time to leaven it, while adding flour gradually keeps the texture from becoming too wet.

“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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