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 ↓
White 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.
Make the dough
Scald the milk and combine it with the water until lukewarm.
Dissolve the yeast cake in 2 tablespoons of warm water and add it to the milk and water mixture.
Stir in the salt.
Gradually add flour until a dough forms.
Knead the dough until smooth.
Set the dough to rise until very light.
Shape and bake
Mold the dough into loaves and let it rise again.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Produces carbon dioxide gas during fermentation, which makes the dough rise and become light.
- Milk
- Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps browning on the crust.
The step that matters
Kneading the dough until smooth. Kneading develops the gluten network so the dough can trap the gas from the yeast. 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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