Skip to main content
Bread

White Bread

A yeast bread made with sugar, salt, shortening, milk, and flour, baked after overnight rise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
White Bread

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 ↓

White 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.

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, salt, and shortening in a bowl.

  2. Pour hot water over the mixture and let it stand until the shortening melts.

  3. Add milk and yeast cake, then gradually mix in flour until the dough is stiff but not hard.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, divide the dough into 4 loaves, placing a bit of butter between each loaf.

  2. Let the loaves rise until slightly rounded at the top of the pan.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness, and a tender crumb to the dough.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a light sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight. The yeast needs a warm, undisturbed period to ferment fully; too cool or too short a rise leaves the dough dense and under-risen, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse and lose structure.

“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.

More white bread recipes

Plain 11Manitoba 3 See all 90 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes