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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A loaf of bread made with whole wheat flour, milk, sugar, salt, yeast, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Entire 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 dough

  1. Scald the milk and add the sugar and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the dissolved yeast cake and wheat flour.

  3. Mix well with a broad knife or spoon.

  4. Cover and let it rise for about 3 hours, or until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into portions and place them in buttered pans.

  2. Let the dough rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 50 minutes.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Wheat flour
Provides the structure that traps gas and sets the crumb as the loaf bakes.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments sugars, making the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness and richness to the crumb and crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. The first rise of about 3 hours must reach double in size, because yeast gas gives the bread its lift. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

“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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