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White Bread

A simple yeast bread made with water, sugar, lard or butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Bread

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.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the sugar in lukewarm water, then add the compressed yeast and let it stand for a few minutes.

  2. Add the melted lard or butter to the mixture.

  3. Mix the salt into the flour; add half the flour and beat thoroughly.

  4. Add the remaining flour or enough to make a dough that can be handled.

  5. Knead the dough until it is perfectly smooth and elastic.

  6. Place the dough in a greased bowl, grease the top to prevent crust formation, cover, and set aside in a warm place free from drafts until light, about 2 hours.

Shape, rise and bake

  1. Mould the dough into loaves and place in well-greased bread pans, filling them half full.

  2. Cover the loaves and let them rise until double in bulk.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the loaf an airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and elasticity.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and encourages browning in the crust.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Lukewarm water
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.

The step that matters

Kneading until smooth and elastic. Kneading aligns and strengthens gluten strands so the dough can trap the gas produced by yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense.

“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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