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Bread

Milk Bread

A yeasted loaf made with milk, flour, sugar, lard, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Milk Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add 1½ quarts of flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 1½ hours.

Knead and shape

  1. When risen, add lard (or butter), remaining flour, and salt.

  2. Knead until smooth and elastic, then place in a greased bowl.

  3. Cover and let rise again until doubled in size, about 2 hours.

  4. Mold into loaves and place in greased bread pans, filling them half full.

  5. Cover and let rise again until doubled, about 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Bake for 40 to 50 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).

  2. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Flour
Builds the gluten structure that traps gas and holds the loaf's shape.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the bread soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Knead until smooth and elastic. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the yeast's gas. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense and coarse.

“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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