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Bread From Milk Yeast

A bread made by mixing cornmeal, water, baking soda, salt, and flour, then rising and baking.

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. The day before baking, pour enough boiling sweet milk over the cornmeal to make a batter-like consistency.

  2. In winter, keep the mixture warm overnight.

  3. Pour boiling water into a pitcher.

  4. Add baking soda and salt to the pitcher.

  5. Once cooled, add flour to make a stiff batter.

  6. Mix in the cornmeal mixture.

  7. Place the pitcher in warm water.

  8. Cover with a towel.

  9. Let it rise until bubbly.

Make the loaves

  1. Pour the yeast into a bread pan.

  2. Add warm water or milk mixture to the pan.

  3. Add enough flour to knead into loaves.

  4. Knead slightly harder than for biscuits.

  5. Bake as soon as it 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 batter base that ferments and gives the bread a coarser, slightly sweet texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic fermented batter to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Flour
Builds the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Milk
Adds richness, softness and browning to the crumb and crust.

The step that matters

Let it rise until bubbly. The batter needs time for the yeast to ferment and build gas. Rising too little leaves a dense loaf, while the bread should be baked once it has risen to the top of the pan so it does not collapse.

“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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