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Bread

Bread

A simple yeast bread made with milk or water, sugar, butter, salt, and flour, baked into loaves or biscuits.

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

Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine warm milk or water, sugar, and butter.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water and add it to the bowl.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff enough to handle.

  4. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead until soft and elastic.

  5. Place the dough back in the bowl, cover tightly, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into loaves or shape into biscuits.

  2. Allow the loaves or biscuits to rise again in the baking pan until doubled in size.

  3. Bake loaves for about 1 hour at 400°F (200°C) and biscuits for 10 to 20 minutes in a hotter oven.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments sugars, making the dough rise.
Warm milk or water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and dissolves the yeast.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and tenderizes the bread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Kneading until soft and elastic. Kneading aligns gluten strands so the dough can trap gas. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes dense, while the rise before shaping depends on that trapped gas.

“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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