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Bread

Good Family Bread

A yeasted bread made with flour, salt, yeast, and warm milk and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Good Family 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. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Dilute the yeast with water and let it sit for 24 hours.

  3. Combine the diluted yeast with 2 to 3 quarts of warm milk and water.

  4. Add this mixture to the flour and salt, knead until smooth.

  5. Let the dough rise for 1.5 to 2 hours until light.

  6. Knead the dough again and let it rise for another hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into loaves and shape them lightly.

  2. Place the loaves on a floured surface and cut them slightly on top.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and light.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for a firmer crumb.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour so the gluten can develop, and adds softness and browning from milk sugars.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light texture. Rising too short leaves a dense loaf, while the second rise helps build a finer, more even crumb.

“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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