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Bread

Bread From Milk Yeast

Bread leavened by milk yeast, made with cornmeal, baking soda, and flour.

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 ↓

Bread From Milk Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the yeast

  1. Pour enough boiling sweet milk over ½ cup cornmeal to make a batter-like consistency.

  2. Keep the batter warm overnight.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling water into a pitcher.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon baking soda and ¼ teaspoon salt to the water.

  5. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  6. Add enough flour to make a stiff batter and mix in the cornmeal mixture.

  7. Place the pitcher in warm water, cover with a towel, and let it rise until bubbly.

Make the dough

  1. Pour the yeast into a bread pan.

  2. Add 1½ pints of warm water or a mix of water and milk to the pan.

  3. Add enough flour to knead into loaves.

  4. Knead slightly harder than for biscuits.

Bake

  1. Bake as soon as the dough rises to the top of the pan.

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).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the starter batter that feeds the rise and adds a coarse, hearty texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to release gas, adding lift and a lighter crumb.
Flour
Builds the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Warm water or milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the yeast active so the dough can rise.

The step that matters

Knead slightly harder than for biscuits. Kneading develops gluten, which traps the gas the yeast produces. Kneading too little leaves a weak structure that cannot hold its rise, while the dough needs enough work to become smooth and elastic.

“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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