Skip to main content
Bread

Excellent Family Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, salt, yeast, and milk, left to rise overnight and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Excellent Family Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Make a hole in the center and add the yeast.

  3. Stir in the lukewarm milk to create a thin batter.

  4. Cover the mixture with a little flour and let it sit by the fire overnight.

Knead and rise

  1. The next morning, add the warm milk and knead the dough for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the dough in a warm spot for 1.5 hours.

  3. Knead the dough again and shape it into loaves or bricks.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on size.

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

All-purpose flour
Gluten proteins form the network that traps gas and gives the loaf its structure.
Yeast
Yeast produces carbon dioxide gas, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the gluten can develop.

The step that matters

Overnight rest of the yeast batter. A slow overnight fermentation gives the yeast hours to build gas and flavor, so the dough rises well. Rushing this rest leaves a dense, flat loaf.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes