Skip to main content
Bread

Bread Sticks

Bread sticks are small, flat rolls made from a yeast dough of milk, butter, sugar, salt, yeast, water, egg white, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a sponge by combining milk, sugar, salt, yeast, and lukewarm water.

  2. Beat the egg white and add it to the sponge.

Shape and bake

  1. When ready to shape, roll the dough on a lightly floured board to ¼ inch thickness.

  2. Cut with a bread stick cutter or roll under your fingers to about 3¼ inches long.

  3. Place in bread stick pans or on a baking sheet to rise.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 12 to 15 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. Egg + flourtop 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 gluten network that gives the breadsticks their structure.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the surface brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and adds flavor.
Egg white
Adds protein and structure to the dough and helps it set and brown.

The step that matters

Rolling to an even thickness. Dough rolled unevenly bakes unevenly, so thin spots over-crisp or burn while thick spots stay doughy. Even thickness gives breadsticks that bake through at the same rate.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes