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Bread Sticks

Bread sticks are made from a yeast dough with milk, butter, sugar, and flour, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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 dough

  1. Add butter, sugar, and salt to the scalded milk.

  2. When lukewarm, add the dissolved yeast cake, beaten egg white, and flour.

  3. Knead the dough, let it rise, shape it, and let it rise again.

Shape the sticks

  1. Shape the dough into small biscuits.

  2. Roll on a lightly floured board to about 8 inches in length.

  3. Keep the sticks uniform in size with rounded ends.

  4. For soup, make them about the thickness of a pencil and 5 inches long, tying 3 together for each person.

  5. For bread, make them 1 inch in diameter.

Bake

  1. Start baking in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), then reduce the heat to dry and crisp the sticks.

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 dough its structure and chew.
Yeast cake
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps bind the dough and adds structure to the sticks.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that promote softness and gentle browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning during baking.

The step that matters

Start in a hot oven, then reduce the heat. A hot start gives the sticks an initial rise and set, and lowering the heat afterward dries them through so they become crisp rather than browned on the outside and doughy inside.

“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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