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 ↓
Wheat Bread
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 batter
Boil the milk and let it cool slightly.
Mix in enough flour to create a very stiff batter.
Add the yeast and beat until smooth.
Stir in the salt and let the mixture stand until light.
Shape and bake
Knead the dough well and let it rise.
Mould the dough and place it in pans; let it stand for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
- Yeast
- Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and softness to the crumb and helps browning in the crust.
The step that matters
Let the milk cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Boiled milk must cool slightly before the yeast goes in, or the dough will not rise properly.
“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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