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Bread

Vienna Bread

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

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 ↓

Vienna 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine lukewarm milk and water.

  2. Add lard, salt, and yeast; stir until dissolved.

  3. Gradually mix in flour until a dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth.

  5. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place in greased pans.

  2. Let rise again until doubled, then bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30-40 minutes.

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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, making the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness, and browning from its milk sugars and proteins.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough until smooth. Kneading aligns and strengthens gluten strands, which trap the gas from yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes with a dense, coarse 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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