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Bread

How to Make Good Bread

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

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 400°F (200°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. Prepare a sponge by mixing warm water, yeast, and a little sugar. Let it sit until bubbly.

  2. Gradually add wheat flour and salt to the sponge, mixing until a dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic.

  4. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  2. Let the loaf rise again until it has doubled in size.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  4. Bake the loaf for 25-30 minutes or 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. 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 and chew.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can develop and dissolves the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during the sponge stage and helps browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse or lose structure. Yeast gas must fill the gluten network to give an open, airy crumb.

“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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