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Bread Sticks

Bread sticks are baked dough sticks made from a leavened batter and soft dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Sticks

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.

Make the sponge

  1. Heat the milk and dissolve the butter in it.

  2. Add water, salt, sugar, and the dissolved yeast when the mixture is lukewarm.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a batter and beat until light and foamy.

  4. Cover and let it stand in a warm place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, add the beaten egg white and enough flour to form a soft dough.

  2. Knead the dough until it doesn't stick to your hands, being careful not to add too much flour.

  3. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  4. Take a small portion of dough and roll it into a stick shape.

  5. Place the sticks on a greased pan, leaving space between them.

  6. Beat the egg white with milk and brush the mixture over the sticks.

  7. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 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 + 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 batter and then the dough, providing the structure that holds the sticks together.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so the dough becomes light and airy as it rises.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives the sticks a richer flavor.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps bind the dough and gives the surface a glossy, browned finish.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that promote gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the dough. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, so the sticks bake up heavy and dry. Knead only until the dough no longer sticks to the hands.

“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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