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Bread

Milk Bread

A soft loaf made with milk, butter, sugar, salt, yeast, and flour, baked until golden.

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

Milk Bread

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.

Prepare

  1. Measure the milk after scalding and place it in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the melted butter, sugar, and salt to the milk.

  3. Once the mixture is cool, add the yeast and stir well.

Make the dough

  1. Gradually stir in the flour, adding just enough to knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  2. Cover the dough and let it rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Punch down the dough, divide it into four parts, and shape into loaves or biscuits.

  2. Let the shaped dough rise again in the pans.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the crumb and helps the dough stay tender.
Flour
Builds the structure of the dough as its proteins form gluten during kneading.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, helping the dough rise and brown lightly.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot scalded milk can stop the dough from rising. Cooling the mixture first keeps the yeast alive.

“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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