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Vienna Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with milk, salt, sugar, lard, and water, baked until golden and hollow‑sounding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Combine salt, sugar, lard, and milk in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast to the mixture.

  4. Add enough flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface.

  6. Knead the dough for 20 minutes.

  7. Place the dough in a greased bowl.

  8. Grease the top of the dough to prevent a hard crust.

  9. Cover the bowl.

  10. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, overnight in winter or about four hours in summer.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead lightly to remove gas bubbles.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves or rolls.

  3. Let the loaves rise in the pan for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  4. Bake the loaves for 40 to 60 minutes until golden brown and hollow-sounding when tapped.

  5. Let the rolls rise for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  6. Bake the rolls in a hot oven (400 °F) for 20 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. Sugar + buttertop 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 richness and tenderness to the crumb and helps the dough brown.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the loaf its airy structure.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until it doubles in size. Rising length depends on season and temperature. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough collapses and loses structure, so judge by doubled volume rather than the clock alone.

“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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