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Bread

Vienna Bread

A yeast bread made with sweet milk, boiling water, salt, Vienna yeast cake, flour, and butter.

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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sponge

  1. Pour boiling water into the milk to scald it.

  2. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup of lukewarm water.

  3. Mix flour into the milk and water until you have a thin batter and it is cool.

  4. Add the salt and the dissolved yeast, then mix in more flour until you have a soft sponge.

Knead and rise

  1. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Place the dough in a buttered dish and add a little soft butter on top to prevent hardening.

  3. Cover closely and let rise in a warm place for 3 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place in pans, cutting 2 or 3 slashes on top.

  2. Cover and let rise for 1 hour longer.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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
Provides the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaves their crumb.
Vienna yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
Sweet milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps the loaf brown.
Soft butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and keeps the crust from drying out.

The step that matters

Knead the dough thoroughly. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense and coarse.

“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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