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Bread

White Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with scalded milk, sugar, salt, flour, yeast, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

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 ↓

White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the cooled scalded milk, sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add enough flour to make a batter and beat thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the dissolved yeast and lard.

Rise and knead

  1. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise until light.

  2. Add more flour and knead the dough.

  3. Let it rise for one hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough into loaves, let rise again, and bake for one hour.

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. 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
Provides the structure that holds the bread's shape as gluten develops.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb, and helps the crust brown.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. If the dough is underproofed, the loaves will bake up dense and heavy.

“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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