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Bread

Bread From Milk Yeast

A bread made using milk yeast, cornmeal, baking soda, salt, and water or milk.

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

Bread From Milk Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Combine ½ cup cornmeal with enough boiling sweet milk to achieve a batter-like thickness.

  2. Keep the mixture warm overnight.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling water into a pitcher. Add 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt to the pitcher.

  4. Once cooled, add enough flour to make a stiff batter. Mix in the cornmeal mixture.

  5. Place the pitcher in warm water, cover with a towel, and keep warm until the yeast rises.

Make and bake the bread

  1. Pour the yeast into a bread pan. Add 1½ pints of warm water (or a mix of water and milk) to the pan.

  2. Add enough flour to knead into loaves. Knead slightly harder than for biscuits.

  3. Bake as soon as it rises to the top of the pan.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Cornmeal
Forms a thick batter-like base that adds body and a coarse, slightly crumbly texture.
Flour
Provides the gluten structure that holds the loaves together and gives chewiness after kneading.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the mixture to produce gas, helping the dough rise and lighten.
Milk
Adds richness, tenderness and browning to the crumb and crust when used in place of some water.

The step that matters

Knead slightly harder than for biscuits. Kneading develops gluten, which traps the gas from the yeast and gives the loaf its structure. Biscuit dough is handled gently, so bread needs more working to become elastic enough to 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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