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Bread

Steamed Graham Bread

A steamed bread made with Graham flour, milk, yeast, salt, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Graham 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 sponge

  1. Boil the milk and thicken it with Graham flour until it resembles a thin batter.

  2. Once cooled, add the hop yeast and set in a warm place to rise.

  3. When light, mix in the salt and syrup, then add enough Graham flour to stir with a spoon.

Shape and steam

  1. Dust a surface with fine flour and mold the dough until it is smooth and not too stiff.

  2. Place the dough in a round basin that fits in your steamer and let it rise again.

  3. When risen, steam over boiling water for 1 hour, then bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  4. Do not open the steamer while cooking to prevent the bread from becoming heavy.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Graham flour
Thickens the milk into a batter and forms the bread's structure and nutty, coarse texture.
Hop yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and adds richness and softness.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown slightly during baking.

The step that matters

Do not open the steamer during cooking. Opening the steamer releases steam and drops the temperature, so the dough can cool and fail to finish rising, making the bread heavy.

“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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