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Bread

French Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with wheat flour, milk, salt, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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French Bread

Why it works: Wheat and milk 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 ↓

French Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Dilute the yeast in warm water and mix well with the flour.

  2. Cover the mixture with flannel and let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Work in the skimmed milk and salt until the dough is ropy.

  4. Cover the dough again and keep it warm for a while.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls or place it in tin molds.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes to 1½ hours, depending on the size of the loaves.

  3. Remove the bread from the oven and rasp off any darker parts of the crust.

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.

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.

  1. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten proteins that form the dough's structure and hold the gas.
Skimmed milk
Adds moisture and milk proteins that soften the crumb and aid browning.
Sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens the gluten network for a firmer dough.

The step that matters

Work in the skimmed milk and salt until the dough is ropy. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap the gas from the yeast. Stopping too early leaves a weak dough that cannot hold its rise, while the salt added at this point must be fully worked in to be evenly distributed.

“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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