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Bread

Cream Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, flour, salt, sugar, butter, and 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 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 ↓

Cream Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Cool the milk until lukewarm.

  3. Add the yeast and sugar to the milk and dissolve the yeast and sugar.

  4. Warm the flour.

  5. Make a nest in the center of the flour and pour the liquid into the nest.

  6. Mix in about 2/3 of the flour.

  7. Add the salt and melted butter and continue to mix.

  8. Knead until the dough is smooth and springy, about 5 minutes.

Rise and shape

  1. Place the dough in a covered bowl.

  2. Let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Press the dough down and turn it over.

  4. Let it rise again until at least three times its original size.

  5. Press down again.

  6. Shape the dough into loaves.

  7. Let the loaves rise.

Bake

  1. Bake the loaves.

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. 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Provides liquid and sugars that feed the yeast and give the dough moisture.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let it rise until doubled in size. Rising gives the yeast time to build gas and develop flavor. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose its structure.

“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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