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Bread

Plain White Family Bread

A simple white bread made with flour, yeast, lard, salt, and water, baked into two loaves.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Mix 1 pint of flour with ½ pint of hop yeast.

  2. Place ½ gallon of flour in a tray and make a well in the center.

  3. Add the yeast mixture and the piece of lard to the well.

Knead and rise

  1. Knead the mixture with tepid water and salt until well combined.

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

  3. Knead the dough again with a little flour.

  4. Divide the dough into two loaves and set in a warm place to rise.

Bake and serve

  1. 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 and chew.
Hop yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Salt
Strengthens the gluten and controls the pace of fermentation for flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time and a suitable temperature to produce gas and flavour. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough collapses and loses structure.

“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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