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Bread

Household Bread

A simple loaf made from flour, yeast, milk or water, salt, and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Household Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Place the flour in a large kneading tub or trough.

  2. Make a hollow in the center of the flour.

  3. Dilute the yeast with 4 quarts of lukewarm milk or water, or a mixture of both.

  4. Stir in enough flour from the sides to make a thick batter.

  5. Cover the batter with a handful of flour.

  6. Let the batter rise for about an hour.

  7. Add more warm liquid to the risen batter to form a firm dough.

  8. Ensure there are no lumps in the dough.

  9. Cover the dough with a cloth.

  10. Let the dough rise again for about an hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Lightly work the dough.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves weighing 2 to 3 pounds each.

  3. Bake the loaves in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 1.75 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars in the batter, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast to activate it.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise before adding the rest of the liquid. The yeast needs time in a thick batter to become active and build gas. Rushing this step or adding too much liquid early weakens the rise and the final crumb.

“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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