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Bread

Household Bread Baking

A simple bread dough made with flour, milk, yeast, and baked in an oven.

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

Household Bread Baking

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. In a large earthenware basin, place the flour and make a hole in the center.

  2. Pour the warmed milk over the yeast and stir it into the flour gradually, leaving a rim of flour around the edges until it reaches a batter consistency.

  3. Sprinkle a little flour on top and cover with a woolen cloth. Let it sit by the fire or under a tin screen overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, knead the remaining flour into the dough, adding warm milk if needed to moisten.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves and let them rise for 1.5 hours.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  4. Grease earthenware or tin pans with butter or flour.

  5. Bake the loaves until well risen and the crust is hard.

  6. Once removed from the oven, brush the tops with water or rub with a small piece of butter for a glossy finish.

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 + buttertop 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).

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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure, providing the framework that holds the loaves together.
Milk
Adds moisture to the dough and contributes to a softer crumb and browning.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.

The step that matters

Overnight sponge. The batter must be left to ferment slowly and fully; yeast needs time and mild warmth to build the gas and flavour that give the loaves their rise.

“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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