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Bread

Wheat Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with milk, water, sugar, salt, shortening, and flour.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Heat the milk and water until almost boiling.

  2. Mix the hot milk, hot water, sugar, salt, and shortening in a bowl.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in a cup of warm water and let it foam.

  4. Once the milk mixture cools, combine it with the foamed yeast.

  5. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  6. Let the dough rise for about 5 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and let them rise again in the tins.

  2. Bake the loaves.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid.
Yeast
Produces gas as it feeds, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps the crust brown.
Shortening
Tenderizes the crumb by coating flour strands and adding fat.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise for about 5 hours. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for good volume. Rising too briefly leaves a dense loaf, while the second rise in the tins also builds the open texture before baking.

“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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