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Vienna Bread

Vienna Bread is a yeast‑leavened loaf made with flour, milk, water, salt, and yeast, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Sift flour into a tin pan and create a well in the center.

  2. Pour in milk and water, mixing in enough flour to form a thin batter.

  3. Quickly add 1 pint of milk mixed with salt and yeast.

  4. Cover the pan with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Mix in the remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the pan.

  2. Let the dough stand for 2½ hours.

  3. Divide the dough into 1-pound pieces, then cut each into 12 parts.

  4. Fold each piece's corners to the center and let rise on a dough board for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 10 minutes.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds richness, softness and browning from milk sugars and proteins.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can develop and the dough can rise.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.

The step that matters

Mix in the remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the pan. Adding flour gradually and stopping when the dough pulls cleanly from the pan controls hydration. Too much flour makes the bread dense and dry, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape.

“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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