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Vienna Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with flour, milk, water, salt, and compressed yeast, baked at 400°F.

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

Vienna 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 batter

  1. Mix flour, milk, and water to form a thin batter.

  2. Dissolve salt in ½ pint of milk and add yeast.

  3. Quickly add the milk mixture to the batter.

  4. Leave some flour against the side of the pan, cover, and let rise for 45 minutes.

Shape and rise

  1. Mix in the remaining flour until the dough leaves the sides of the pan.

  2. Let the dough stand for 2.5 hours.

  3. Divide the dough into 1-pound pieces and then into 12 smaller pieces.

  4. Fold the corner of each piece to the center and let rise for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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. 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

Flour
Gluten forms a network that traps gas and gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk sugars that help the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Quickly add the milk mixture to the batter. Salt in the milk mixture can slow yeast if it sits against it for long. Adding it promptly keeps the yeast evenly distributed and fermenting steadily through the dough.

“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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