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Bread

Whole Wheat Bread

Whole wheat bread made with milk, sugar, salt, yeast, all-purpose flour, and whole wheat flour.

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

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole Wheat 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. Scald the milk and let it cool slightly.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in the warm milk.

  3. Add sugar and salt to the milk mixture.

  4. Stir in the all-purpose flour to create a sponge.

Knead and rise

  1. Gradually add whole wheat flour until the dough is kneadable.

  2. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  3. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Allow to rise again before baking.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the initial sponge with gluten that gives the dough its early structure.
Whole wheat flour
Adds bulk and structure to the dough, with its bran making the crumb denser than white flour.
Yeast cake
Ferments the sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning on the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading until smooth and elastic. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap the gas yeast produces. Under-kneaded dough, especially with heavy whole wheat flour, 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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