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Bread

Hygienic Graham Bread

A simple bread made with graham flour, wheat flour, milk, water, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hygienic Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix graham flour and wheat flour in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine warm milk and water, then mix in the yeast and salt.

Make and rise the dough

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, kneading until the dough no longer sticks to your hands.

  2. Place the dough in closed bake pans and allow it to rise moderately.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until thoroughly cooked.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk of the structure and a nutty, coarse texture.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten to give the dough elasticity and help it hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the bread its airy crumb.
Milk and water mixture
Hydrates the flours to form dough, and milk adds softness and mild browning.

The step that matters

Kneading until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough stays sticky and rises poorly, giving a dense loaf.

“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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