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Bread

Whole Wheat or Graham Bread

A loaf of bread made with whole wheat and graham flour, scalded milk, yeast, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 or 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 dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the scalded milk, salt, white flour, whole wheat flour, sugar, and yeast.

  2. Mix until a dough forms; this dough will be softer and require less kneading. If the dough is too moist, add a little more flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  2. Let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes longer than white bread.

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 + 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. Flour + sugartop 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

Whole wheat flour
Adds a denser, softer crumb and more fiber-rich body than white flour.
White flour
Provides gluten structure that helps the loaf hold its shape and rise.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness and helps the crust brown.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Adding flour only if the dough is too moist. Whole wheat flour absorbs more liquid than white flour, so adding too much extra flour at once can make the loaf dense and dry. Add small amounts until the dough is workable.

“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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