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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A yeast‑leavened whole wheat loaf made with scalded milk, sugar or yeast cake, salt, and coarse whole wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Make the dough

  1. Add the sweetening and salt to the scalded milk, then cool it.

  2. When the milk is lukewarm, add the dissolved yeast cake and flour, then beat well.

  3. Cover the mixture and let it rise until it doubles in bulk.

Shape and bake

  1. Beat the mixture again, then turn it into greased bread pans, filling them halfway.

  2. Let the dough rise again, then bake.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Coarse whole wheat flour
Forms the bread's structure and gives it a hearty, nutty texture.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the dough double in bulk. The first rise must be allowed to finish, since the yeast needs time to produce gas that lightens the dough. Rising too short leaves the loaf dense.

“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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