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Bread

Vienna Bread

Vienna Bread is a yeast‑leavened roll made with Vienna flour, butter, milk, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sponge

  1. Crumb the yeast into a basin.

  2. Add sugar and flour.

  3. Cover with lukewarm milk.

  4. Set in a warm place to rise.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add salt.

  3. Make a well in the center.

  4. Mix the yeast.

  5. Add enough warm milk to make a dough.

  6. Knead lightly until the dough leaves your hands clean.

  7. Turn the smooth side up.

  8. Cut across the dough.

  9. Cover the dough.

  10. Let rise for 2 hours.

  11. Knead lightly.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide into small rolls.

  2. Place the rolls on a greased tin.

  3. Let rise for 10 minutes.

  4. Brush the rolls with milk and sugar.

  5. Bake in a hot oven until light brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

Vienna flour
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten network builds on.
German yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds some browning sugars.

The step that matters

Knead lightly until the dough leaves your hands clean. Kneading develops gluten so the dough holds gas during rising. Stopping when the dough is smooth and no longer sticky gives a dough that is elastic but not tough.

“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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