Skip to main content
Bread

White Bread

A simple yeast bread made with milk, water, salt, sugar, shortening, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and shortening.

  3. Let it cool to lukewarm.

  4. Stir in warm water and dissolved yeast.

  5. Combine flour with the liquid to make a soft sponge.

  6. Let it rise in a warm place until bubbly.

Knead and shape

  1. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Knead well on a floured board.

  3. Allow the dough to rise until doubled in size.

  4. Shape into loaves.

  5. Let the loaves rise again until light.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven 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

Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps browning.
Flour
Builds the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its shape.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, making the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Shortening
Tenderizes the crumb by coating gluten strands and adding fat.

The step that matters

Knead until the dough is stiff and smooth. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Too little kneading leaves a dense, weak loaf that does not hold its rise in the oven.

“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.

More white bread recipes

Plain 11Manitoba 3 See all 90 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes