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Bread

Rye Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with rye and wheat flour, lard, sugar, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine rye flour, wheat flour, milk or water, lard, sugar, salt, and yeast.

  2. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

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

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place in greased bread pans.

  2. Let the loaves rise again until doubled.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30-40 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.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Forms a denser crumb with less gluten structure than wheat flour, giving rye bread its characteristic texture.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure and helps the loaves hold their shape and rise.
Yeast or leaven
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the loaves an airy texture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the bread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning of the crust in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise again until doubled. Rye flour has less gluten than wheat, so the dough can be slack and heavy. Rising fully before baking lets the yeast build gas for lift, while under-proofing leaves a dense loaf.

“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.

More rye bread recipes

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