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Bread

White Bread

A simple white bread made with flour, lard, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast, baked to a golden loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Flour and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, lard, warm milk, sugar, salt, and yeast.

  2. Mix well and let the dough rise overnight.

Shape and rise

  1. Knead the dough in the morning.

  2. Place the dough in tins and let it rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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 bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, which leavens the loaf.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time and mild warmth to produce gas and develop flavor. Too little time leaves the bread dense, while over-fermenting weakens the gluten and causes a collapsed loaf.

“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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