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Bread

Vienna Bread with a Short Sponge

A yeast bread made with a short sponge, milk, sugar, salt, lard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Vienna Bread with a Short Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 pint of warm water and mix with some flour to make a soft batter.

  2. Let it sit for 20 minutes.

  3. Add 2 gallons of water and more flour to create a slack sponge.

  4. Beat well and let it rise at 75°F to 80°F for 2 hours.

Make the dough

  1. Heat the milk to the same temperature and mix in the sugar, salt, and lard.

  2. Combine with the sponge to form a smooth, medium‑firm dough.

  3. Allow the dough to rise well.

  4. Work it over and let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Scale, mold, and shape into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in cloth‑lined boxes dusted with flour, ensuring they do not touch each other.

  3. Keep them covered to prevent drying.

  4. Let the loaves proof for about 45 minutes.

  5. Transfer them to a peel using a thin board, make three slanting cuts on top, and bake.

  6. Preheat the oven with steam before placing the loaves inside.

  7. Maintain even steam pressure during baking.

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).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and browns the crust.
Lard
Tenderizes the crumb and adds fat for a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Preheat the oven with steam before placing the loaves inside. Steam keeps the crust surface moist early in baking so the loaves can expand fully before the crust sets, giving a glossy, open crust. Without steam, the crust sets too soon and the loaves rise less.

“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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