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Bread

How to Make Good Bread

A simple yeast bread made with wheat flour, water, yeast, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Make Good 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. 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix 4 cups of wheat flour with 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve 2 teaspoons of yeast in 1½ cups of warm water in a separate bowl.

  3. Combine the yeast mixture with the flour mixture. Stir until a dough forms.

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

  5. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Cover the dough.

  6. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Shape the dough into a loaf. Place the loaf in a greased loaf pan.

  3. Let the loaf rise again for 30 minutes.

  4. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Rising is driven by yeast activity, which depends on warmth and time. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse or bake up coarse and flat.

“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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