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Milk Bread

Milk Bread is a soft loaf made with milk, sugar, salt, yeast, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Milk Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Heat 2 cups of milk until scalding.

  2. Dissolve 1 cake of compressed yeast in half a cup of lukewarm water.

  3. Combine 2 teaspoonfuls salt and 1 tablespoonful sugar; add enough flour to make a stiff dough, about 6 or 7 cups.

  4. Pour the hot milk over the sugar and salt.

  5. When cool, add the dissolved yeast cake.

  6. With a knife, cut the flour into the mixture and knead for twenty minutes.

Rise and shape

  1. Put dough in a warm place to rise.

  2. When risen twice the bulk, cut down and let rise again.

  3. Shape into two loaves and a pan of biscuits; rise double the bulk in the pan.

Bake

  1. Bake the bread for forty-five minutes.

Milk Bread with Sponge

  1. For Milk Bread with Sponge: Pour two cups of scalded milk onto one tablespoonful of sugar and two teaspoonfuls of salt.

  2. When cool, add one yeast cake dissolved in one-half cup of lukewarm water.

  3. Stir in three cups of flour, beat well.

  4. Let rise until light and bubbly, about an hour.

  5. Add enough flour to knead, knead twenty minutes.

  6. Let rise and bake the same as milk bread.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

653Calories
21 gProtein
9 gFat
120 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 6 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chewy crumb.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps the loaf brown.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens gluten for a better-textured dough.

The step that matters

Knead the stiff dough for twenty minutes. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Too little kneading leaves a dense loaf that rises 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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