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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A loaf of bread made with whole wheat flour, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Entire Wheat 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, sugar, salt, and softened yeast mixture.

  2. Add the whole wheat flour and knead the dough until smooth.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F) until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Punch down the dough, shape it into a double loaf or two single loaves.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until light and golden.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Whole wheat flour
Provides the structure of the loaf and gives the bread its nutty flavor and darker color.
Yeast
Produces gas as it feeds on sugar, making the dough rise and become airy.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning on the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast for rising and adds a touch of sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs a warm place to grow and release gas. If the dough rises too little, the loaf stays dense; too long and it can collapse or taste sour.

“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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