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Wheat Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, yeast, salt, water or milk, and optional butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Wheat Bread

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wheat 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and make a hole in the center.

  2. Pour in the yeast and stir lightly.

  3. Add warm water or milk, and if using water, dissolve a piece of butter the size of an egg in it.

  4. Stir in the liquid gently without mixing all the flour.

  5. Cover the bowl with a thick towel and let it rise in a warm place for several hours.

  6. In the morning, add salt and knead the dough until elastic.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place them in baking tins, allowing them to rise until doubled in size.

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

  3. Bake the loaves until golden brown, about 25-30 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.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens gluten, giving the bread flavor and structure.
Water or milk
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and the dough becomes workable.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor and tenderness.

The step that matters

Knead until elastic after the long rise. Kneading develops the gluten network so the dough can trap the gas from the yeast. Under-kneading leaves a dense loaf with poor rise, while the dough should be kneaded until smooth and elastic before shaping.

“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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