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Potato Bread

A yeast-leavened loaf made from boiled potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Bread

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 ↓

Potato Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil 12 medium-sized potatoes until very soft.

  2. Drain the boiled potatoes and peel them.

  3. Mash the peeled potatoes while hot, ensuring no lumps remain.

  4. Measure out 3 pounds (about 5 solidly packed half-pint cupfuls) of the mashed potatoes and let them cool to lukewarm.

Make the sponge

  1. Mix the yeast with 3 tablespoons of lukewarm water until smooth.

  2. Add the yeast mixture to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Rinse the cup used for the yeast with 1 tablespoon of water and add it to the potato mixture.

  4. Stir in the salt, sugar, and about 4 ounces of flour (1 scant half pint).

  5. Mix thoroughly by hand without adding more water.

  6. Let the mixture rise until very light, about 2 hours at 86°F (30°C).

Make and bake the dough

  1. Add the remaining flour.

  2. Knead until a smooth, elastic dough forms.

  3. Add water only if necessary to achieve desired consistency.

  4. Allow the dough to rise until it has tripled in volume, about 1 to 2 hours.

  5. Divide the dough into four parts.

  6. Shape each part into a loaf.

  7. Place the loaves in greased, slightly warmed pans.

  8. Let the loaves rise until doubled in volume.

  9. Bake for 45 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. 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 + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Potatoes
Provide moisture and starch that give the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Bread flour
Forms gluten network that gives the dough structure and elasticity.
Yeast
Ferments sugars to produce carbon dioxide, causing the dough to rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until very light. Yeast needs enough time to ferment the sponge and build gas and flavor. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough collapses and loses structure.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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