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Bread

Ordinary or Fermented Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with flour, water, potatoes, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ordinary or Fermented Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add it to the flour mixture.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes and mix them in.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

Rise and shape

  1. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  2. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a greased pan.

  3. Allow it to rise again until it has risen above the edge of the pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

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 + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Boiled potatoes
Add moisture and starch, helping the loaf stay soft and moist.

The step that matters

Second rise in the pan. Letting the shaped loaf rise fully before baking gives it an open, even crumb. Baking too early produces a dense loaf that may split or stay heavy.

“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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