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Bread

Wheat Bread

A wheat bread made with milk, yeast, salt, shortening, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Wheat Bread

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the milk and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add the shortening to the milk.

  3. Mix the salt, yeast, and milk into the flour to form a hard sponge.

  4. Knead the dough for about 20 minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Let it rise until about 9 o'clock.

  2. Knead it down and leave it until morning.

  3. Place the dough in tins and bake when light.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the bread's shape as it rises and bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form a soft, elastic dough.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the bread.

The step that matters

Bake when light. Yeast gas needs time to build up before baking. Baking an under-risen dough gives a dense loaf, while a well-risen dough bakes into a lighter, open crumb.

“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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