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Bread

To Make Mixed Bread

A bread made from maize meal, potatoes, wheat flour, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Make Mixed 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 ↓

To Make Mixed Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the components

  1. Boil the maize meal in water until it forms a paste.

  2. Boil, skin, and mash the potatoes.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the maize paste, mashed potatoes, and wheat flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add coarse sea salt and yeast, then knead into a dough.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Divide the dough into loaves and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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. Potato + flourtop 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

Maize meal
Forms a thick paste that gives the bread its body and a coarse, hearty crumb.
Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the loaves soft and moist.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten that builds structure and lets the dough hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs a warm place and enough time to produce gas; under-proofed dough stays dense and heavy, while the gluten network traps the gas to give a light loaf.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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