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Bread and Yeast

A yeast-leavened bread made with water or milk, flour, sugar, lard or butter, salt, and active dry yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 and Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix warm water or milk with sugar and yeast in a large bowl.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes until frothy.

  3. Add lard or butter and salt to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add flour, mixing until a dough forms.

  5. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Rise and shape

  1. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

  2. Punch down the dough and shape it into loaves or rolls.

  3. Place shaped dough in greased pans, cover, and let rise again until doubled, about 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Active dry yeast
Ferments sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Warm water or scalded milk
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast, adding moisture to the dough.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Kneading until smooth and elastic. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense, while the rise itself depends on that trapped gas.

“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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