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Bread

Milk Bread

Milk Bread is a yeast bread made with scalded milk, butter, salt, sugar, 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.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in the scalded milk.

  2. Add salt and sugar to the milk mixture.

  3. When cool, stir in the yeast.

  4. Gradually add enough flour to knead the dough well, about 6 to 7 cups.

  5. Knead the dough thoroughly, then cover and let it rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut down the risen dough, divide it into 4 parts, and shape into loaves or biscuits.

  2. Place the shaped dough into pans and let it rise again.

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

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

Scalded milk
Provides moisture and tenderness, and its milk proteins help give the crumb a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning in the crust.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins form gluten during kneading, giving the bread its structure.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas for the gluten network to trap, so under-proofed dough bakes up dense while over-proofed dough can collapse.

“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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