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Bread

Oatmeal Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, butter, flour, salt, sugar, oatmeal, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Oatmeal Bread

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 ↓

Oatmeal 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 batter

  1. Scald the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the yeast, salt, and sugar that have been creamed together and dissolved in warm water.

  3. Add enough flour to make a drop batter after beating well.

  4. Let the batter rise in a warm place until light and foamy.

Add oatmeal and rise

  1. Gently stir in the freshly made warm oatmeal.

  2. Cover the dough and let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Shape the dough into small loaves and let them rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

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 + 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. Flour + sugartop 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

Flour
Provides the gluten network and starch that give the loaves their structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the batter and dough rise and turn light.
Cooked oatmeal
Adds moisture and a tender, slightly dense crumb to the loaf.
Milk
Adds moisture, richness, and some browning from its milk sugars.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light and foamy before adding the oatmeal. The yeast needs time to become active and build gas in the batter. If the batter is not properly risen, the loaves will be dense because the oatmeal weighs down the structure before the dough has enough lift.

“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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