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Bread

Entire Wheat Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with whole wheat flour, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water.

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, salt, and sugar.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast mixture to the bowl.

  4. Gradually add the flour, reserving some for kneading.

  5. Knead the dough thoroughly, keeping it soft.

  6. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 2 to 2.5 hours until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, divide it in half, and knead again.

  2. Place in greased pans and let rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 1 hour.

  4. Remove from pans and cool on all sides.

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. Flour + sugartop 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

Entire wheat flour
Provides the structure of the loaf and absorbs liquid to form the dough.
Fleischmann's yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness, and a tender crumb to the bread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Knead the dough thoroughly, keeping it soft.. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps gas from the yeast, so the loaf rises well. A dough that is too stiff can rise less and bake up dense.

“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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