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Bread

Wheat Bread

A yeast‑leavened wheat bread made with milk, butter, sugar, salt, and flour.

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

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm water.

  2. Add the warm milk and butter to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the sugar and salt.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is hard enough to knead.

  5. Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place.

  6. Once risen, stir it down and let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough and place it in pans.

  2. Allow it to rise once more 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 + 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is hard enough to knead. Too much flour makes the bread dense and dry, while too little leaves a sticky dough that cannot hold gas well. Adding flour slowly lets you stop when the dough is smooth and only slightly tacky.

“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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