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Bread

Milk- Yeast Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, wheat middlings, sugar, ginger, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Milk- Yeast 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.

Prepare the dry mixture

  1. Combine wheat middlings, sugar, ginger, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Store the mixture in an airtight container.

Make the yeast

  1. The day before baking, take 2 tablespoons of the dry mixture and place it in a cup.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture to scald and stir until it resembles yeast; let it sit in a warm place.

  3. The next morning, mix 1 cup of new milk, 1 cup of boiling water, and a pinch of salt.

  4. Stir in flour until the mixture is thick like fritters, then add the yeast mixture.

  5. Place the mixture in a kettle of hot water (as hot as you can comfortably handle) for 2 to 3 hours until foaming.

Bake

  1. Mix the bread dough, place it in pans, and let it rise for about 1 hour.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Wheat middlings
Provides the bulk of the flour base and the grainy, hearty texture of the loaf.
Flour
Builds the structure of the batter and dough so the bread can hold its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to produce gas that helps the bread rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
New milk
Adds moisture, richness, and softness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Foaming the yeast mixture. The mixture must be kept hot long enough for the yeast to activate and foam. If it cools too soon, fermentation slows and the bread will rise poorly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, sugar, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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