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Plain Loaf Bread

A simple loaf made with flour, yeast, salt, lard, and tepid water, baked after overnight rise.

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 Loaf Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  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.

  4. Knead the mixture with tepid salted water until well combined.

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

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough again with a little flour.

  2. Divide the dough into two loaves and place in a warm area to rise.

  3. Bake the loaves until done, then wrap 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 loaves their structure and chew.
Hop yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in the jar. Slow fermentation develops flavor and gas production; too warm or too long can overproof the dough, causing it to collapse and turn sour. Keep the jar covered and check the dough's volume rather than relying only on time.

“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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