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Bread

White Bread

A loaf of bread made with milk, shortening, flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.

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

Why it works: Milk and flour 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

two large loaves and a pan of rolls, or three loaves
Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift flour into a large bowl.

  2. Mix in shortening, sugar, and salt.

  3. Scald the milk, then let it cool to lukewarm.

  4. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk.

  5. Make a hole in the center of the flour and pour the milk and yeast mixture into it.

Rise and shape

  1. Cover tightly and leave in a warm place overnight.

  2. In the morning, stir the mixture, adding flour if necessary until thick enough to mold.

  3. Knead for a few minutes, then return to the bowl and let it rise until light.

  4. This will make two large loaves and a pan of rolls, or three loaves.

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 + flourtop 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).

Milk and flour 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 and chewy crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens its texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Adding flour in the morning. The dough should be thick enough to mold but not stiff. Too much extra flour makes the bread dense and dry, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adjust gradually.

“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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