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To Make White Bread

A recipe for homemade white bread using flour, butter, yeast, salt, eggs, water, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Make White Bread

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Make White 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, butter, yeast, and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs with a spoonful or two of water until frothy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the flour mixture.

  4. Add enough milk to create a creamy dough.

  5. Mix the dough well.

  6. Knead the dough until light.

  7. Place the dough back in the bowl.

Rise and shape

  1. Cover with a cloth and let it rise near a warm spot for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Shape the dough into rolls.

Bake

  1. Prick the rolls with a fork 10 minutes before baking.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches flavor.
Eggs
Add protein and moisture that enrich the dough's structure and color.

The step that matters

Knead the dough until light. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes dense, while the rise itself depends on that trapped gas.

“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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