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Bread

White Bbead

A simple yeast bread made with flour, salt, sugar, yeast, lard or butter, and warm milk or water.

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

White Bbead

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a large bowl.

  2. Add salt, sugar, yeast, and lard or butter; mix well.

  3. Stir in warm milk or boiled water.

  4. Knead the dough thoroughly.

  5. Let the dough rise in a warm place overnight.

  6. In the morning, knead the dough again for a few minutes without adding flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the dough in a baking pan.

  2. Let the dough rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and the dough becomes workable.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes to browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough again in the morning without flour. Adding flour at this stage would make the dough stiff and dry. Kneading without it keeps the dough moist and rebuilds gluten, which supports a good rise and an even crumb.

“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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