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Milk Bread

Milk bread is a yeast‑leavened loaf made with milk, water, flour, salt, yeast, and optional butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Milk Bread

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. Warm the milk and water.

  2. Dissolve the salt and yeast in the warm milk and water.

  3. Make a smooth dough.

  4. Cover the dough with a clean cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 3 hours.

  5. Knead the dough on a board.

  6. Dust the dough lightly with flour.

  7. Cover the dough and let it rise for another hour.

  8. If using skimmed milk or half milk and half water, add 2 oz melted butter to the mixture.

Shape and prove

  1. Divide the dough into pieces.

  2. Shape the pieces into rounds.

  3. Cover the rounds with a cloth to prove.

  4. Brush the loaves with a beaten egg.

  5. Make five or six cuts on top of each loaf with a sharp knife.

Bake

  1. Place each loaf in the oven.

  2. Cover each loaf with a square tin.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Vienna flour
Provides gluten structure that traps gas and gives the bread its chewy crumb.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form, and milk adds softness and browning from its sugars and proteins.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Salt
Tightens gluten strands and controls the pace of yeast fermentation for flavour.

The step that matters

Proving the dough for the full time. Under-proved dough stays dense and over-proved dough collapses, because yeast gas production and gluten stretch must be balanced before baking sets the loaf's shape.

“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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