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Bread

White Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, salt, and yeast.

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

White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the milk and dissolve the butter or lard, sugar, and salt in it.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a little lukewarm water and add it to the milk when it's partly cooled.

  3. Gradually stir the milk mixture into the flour.

Knead and rise

  1. Knead the dough for 20 minutes.

  2. Cover with a clean towel and let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. If rising overnight, knead again in the morning and place in pans to rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake the loaves for about 45 minutes and the biscuits for 20 to 30 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments sugars, making the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving a softer crumb and browner crust.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Knead the dough for 20 minutes. Kneading aligns and stretches the gluten strands in the flour, building an elastic network that holds the rising gas. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense.

“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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