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Bread

Vienna Bread Without Sugar or Lard

A yeast bread made with water, milk, salt, and flour, baked at 325°F to 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Without Sugar or Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and milk at 75°F to 80°F.

  2. Add the salt to the water.

  3. Mix in half of the flour to form a medium firm dough, then add the remaining flour until the dough is smooth and dry.

  4. Cover the dough and let it rise for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place in cloths to prove.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 325°F to 350°F.

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

Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds softness and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.

The step that matters

Adding the flour in stages. Flour absorbs liquid gradually. Adding it in two portions lets you stop when the dough is smooth and dry. Too much flour at once makes a stiff, dense loaf, while too little leaves a sticky dough that is hard to shape and holds its shape poorly.

“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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