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Bread

Milk Bread

Milk Bread is a soft loaf made with milk, butter, sugar, salt, yeast, and flour.

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

Milk 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 dough

  1. Measure the milk after scalding and place it in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the melted butter, sugar, and salt to the milk.

  3. Once cool, add the yeast and stir in the flour gradually.

  4. Use just enough flour to knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  5. Cover the dough and let it rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut down the risen dough, divide it into parts, and shape into loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise again in the pans.

  3. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. 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. Sugar + flourtop 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and elasticity when kneaded.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments sugars, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars and proteins help browning and a soft crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer, richer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only after the milk has cooled. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot scalded milk can stop the rise. Cooling the liquid first keeps the yeast alive so the dough can rise properly.

“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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