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Vienna Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, water, flour, salt, and compressed yeast, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm water.

  2. Stir the yeast mixture into the milk and water.

  3. Add the salt.

  4. Mix in 3 pints of flour, reserving 1 cup for later.

  5. Let the dough rise for 1 hour at 74°F (23°C).

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured surface.

  2. Knead with the reserved flour until it no longer sticks.

  3. Shape into loaves.

  4. Let rise until three times the original size.

  5. Bake for 45 minutes.

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 + 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

Compressed yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms gluten when kneaded, giving the loaves their structure and chew.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps browning.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and the yeast can activate.

The step that matters

Knead with the reserved flour until it no longer sticks. Kneading develops gluten, which traps the gas from the yeast. Adding flour only until the dough stops sticking keeps it workable without making the loaves dense and dry.

“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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