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Bread

Lightning Yeast Bread

A yeast bread made with boiled potatoes, flour, sugar, water, lard, and yeast foam, baked for 50 to 60 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lightning Yeast Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes finely.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with flour, salt, and sugar.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

  4. Add 1½ cups boiling water.

  5. Beat the mixture again.

  6. Stir in 1 pint cold water.

  7. Add the dissolved yeast foam.

  8. Let the dough stand in a warm place for about 10 hours.

Divide and shape

  1. In the morning, take ½ cup yeast and ½ cup water.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 tablespoon lard to each loaf.

  3. Mix the dough into a large loaf.

  4. Mold the dough until it does not stick to the board.

  5. Keep the loaf in a warm place until light.

  6. Mold the dough into loaves.

  7. Keep the loaves warm again until light enough for the oven.

Bake

  1. Bake for 50 to 60 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 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

Flour
Provides the gluten and starch that give the dough its structure.
Boiled potatoes
Add starch and moisture, helping the loaf stay soft and moist.
Yeast foam
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Mold the dough until it does not stick to the board. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Stopping too early leaves a weak structure, while the dough should feel smooth and no longer tacky.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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