Skip to main content
Bread

Light Bread

A simple bread made from sweet milk, hot water, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Light Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Boil the sweet milk.

  2. Make a thin mush of meal.

  3. Set the mush aside in a warm place.

  4. Add hot water to the mush.

  5. Add a little salt.

  6. Make a stiff batter.

  7. Place the batter in a kettle of warm water.

  8. Keep it warm for about an hour.

Make the dough

  1. Sift in flour to make a stiff dough.

  2. Knead well.

  3. Put the dough in a pan.

  4. Set it in a warm place to rise.

  5. Handle the bread carefully to avoid deflating.

  6. Gradually heat the oven before baking.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Sweet milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb through its milk solids and sugars.
Dainty flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Meal (in the method)
Forms the thin mush that starts the fermentation-driven rise.

The step that matters

Handle the bread carefully to avoid deflating. The risen dough is held up by gas trapped in its gluten network. Rough handling knocks out that gas, so the loaf rises less and bakes up dense.

“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.

You might also like

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