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Bread

Potato Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with mashed potatoes, milk, water, salt, sugar, lard or butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Bread

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast in 1 quart of water.

  2. Make a batter with the sugar and some flour.

  3. Let it stand for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the remaining water and create a medium sponge.

  5. Let it rise until it drops.

Make the dough

  1. Thin the mashed potatoes with the milk.

  2. Add the salt and lard.

  3. Combine with the sponge and mix everything well.

  4. Add more flour to form a medium firm dough.

  5. Let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Scale and shape the dough until smooth.

  2. Place it in a pan.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast early on and helps the crust brown.
Milk
Adds richness and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise until it drops. The sponge should rise until it peaks and then falls, showing the yeast is active. Underproofed sponge gives a dense loaf, while overproofed sponge weakens the gluten and can collapse.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, 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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