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Bread

Water Bread with a Sponge

A simple yeast bread made with water, sugar, salt, yeast, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Water Bread with a Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine warm water, sugar, and yeast. Let it sit for 10 minutes until frothy.

  2. Add salt and 3 cups of flour to the yeast mixture. Stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add remaining flour until a soft dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about 10 minutes until elastic.

Rise and shape

  1. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

  2. Punch down the dough, shape it into a loaf, and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  3. Cover and let it rise again until doubled, about 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Yeast
Ferments sugars to produce carbon dioxide, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins form gluten when kneaded, giving the dough structure and elasticity.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten structure for better texture.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough until elastic. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap the gas yeast produces. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense, while the rise times depend on that trapped gas.

“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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