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Entire Wheat Bread

A loaf of bread made from wheat flour, milk, sugar, salt, yeast, and buttered pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Entire Wheat 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

  1. Scald the milk, then add sugar and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast in lukewarm water.

  4. Mix in the wheat flour with a broad knife or spoon.

  5. Cover the dough.

  6. Let it rise for about 3 hours or until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into portions.

  2. Turn portions into buttered pans.

  3. Let rise again.

  4. Bake for about 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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Wheat flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and softens the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the scalded milk mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in; otherwise the dough may not rise.

“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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