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 ↓
Wheat 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.
Make the sponge
Sift the flour into a large bowl and make a hole in the center.
Pour in the yeast and stir lightly.
Add warm water or milk, and if using water, dissolve the butter in it.
Stir in the wet ingredients lightly without mixing all the flour.
Cover the bowl with a thick blanket or towel and let it rise in a warm place for several hours.
Knead and rise
In the morning, add salt and mix all the flour with the sponge, kneading well.
Let the dough rise until it is light, about two hours.
Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead until elastic, using minimal flour.
Shape and bake
Shape the dough into loaves and place them in baking tins, filling them halfway.
Allow the loaves to rise until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Bake the loaves for 10-15 minutes, pricking them with a fork three or four times before baking.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the flour, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
- Warm water or milk
- Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast to activate it.
- Butter
- Adds fat that softens the crumb and adds richness and flavor.
- Egg
- Not in the ingredient list; omitted.
The step that matters
Kneading the dough until elastic. Kneading aligns and develops gluten strands, which trap the gas from the yeast. Too little kneading gives a dense loaf that does not rise well.
“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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