Skip to main content
Bread

Wheat Bread

A yeast‑leavened wheat bread made with milk, boiling water, flour, salt, and yeast, baked until crust forms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Wheat 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 ↓

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine milk and boiling water in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a thin batter.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in a little water and add it to the batter.

  4. Stir in salt and add flour until the dough cannot be stirred with a wooden spoon.

  5. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes until air bubbles form on the surface.

Rise and shape

  1. Butter the inside of a bowl and place the dough inside, buttering the top.

  2. Cover with a lid or napkin and let rise in a warm place (75-80°F) for 3 hours.

  3. Shape the dough into loaves and let rise for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and bake the loaves until the crust forms, about 10-15 minutes.

  2. For different shapes, braid the dough or form it into rolls or buns, cutting a cross in the top before baking.

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).

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 dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps browning.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten for better flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Kneading until air bubbles form. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas yeast produces. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and has a dense, crumbly texture.

“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 wheat bread recipes

Whole 125Barley 5Unfermented Whole 3 See all 74 →

You might also like

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