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Bread

Whole Wheat Bread

A loaf made from mashed potatoes, potato water, sugar, salt, yeast, lard, whole wheat flour, and white flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Whole Wheat Bread

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sponge

  1. Boil enough potatoes to yield 1 pint when mashed.

  2. Save 3 pints of potato water.

  3. Mix the potato water with the mashed potatoes, sugar, and salt. Add the yeast. Stir well.

  4. Let rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add warm water to the mixture. Add more salt. Add a little lard.

  2. Stiffen the mixture with whole wheat flour.

  3. Add about 2 quarts of white flour.

  4. Work the dough down twice.

Bake

  1. Mold the dough into loaves. Let the loaves rise.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + wheattop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas, which makes the dough rise.
White flour
Builds the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Whole wheat flour
Stiffens the dough and adds a nuttier flavor and firmer crumb.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the bread soft and help it stay fresh.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise overnight. The yeast needs time to ferment the sugars and build flavor and gas. Too short a rise leaves the dough dense and under-flavored, while a rise that is far too long can weaken its structure.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wheat, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wheat, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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