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Vienna Bread

Vienna Bread is a yeast‑leavened loaf made with flour, milk, water, salt, and yeast.

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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift 4 pounds of flour into a large bowl and create a well in the center.

  2. Pour in 1 quart of the milk and water mixture, mixing in enough flour to form a thin batter.

  3. Dissolve 1 ounce of coarse sea salt and 1 ¾ ounces of yeast in 1 pint of milk, then quickly add to the batter.

  4. Leave the remaining flour against the sides of the bowl, cover with a cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

  5. Mix in the remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, then let it rest for 2.5 hours.

Shape and rise

  1. Divide the dough into 1-pound pieces, then cut each piece into 12 smaller pieces.

  2. Shape each piece into a square about 3.5 inches thick, folding the corners to the center.

  3. Turn the shaped dough onto a floured surface and let rise for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the bread 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds sugars and proteins that enrich the dough and help browning and a soft crumb.
Coarse sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens gluten, giving the dough flavor and structure.

The step that matters

Mix in the remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Adding flour gradually and stopping when the dough pulls cleanly from the bowl keeps it workable. 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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