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Yeast That Will Not Sour

Yeast for raising bread, made from hops, sugar or molasses, flour, potatoes, and bran, with bread and rolls methods.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and potato 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 ↓

Yeast That Will Not Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop yeast

  1. Boil two ounces of hops in two quarts of water.

  2. Put one cup of brown sugar in a jar.

  3. Boil and strain the hops, then pour them into the jar.

  4. Add one cup of flour stirred smooth.

  5. Let it stand in a warm kitchen until it ferments.

  6. Add six potatoes, boiled and mashed, and one cup of salt.

  7. Simmer the wheat bran and Indian bran in two gallons of boiling water for an hour or so.

  8. Put in a handful of hops.

  9. As soon as the water boils, add one teacup of molasses and one tablespoon of ground ginger.

  10. When cold, put in a teacup of yeast and cork tightly.

  11. Keep cool.

Make the dough

  1. Take four quarts of sifted flour and a teacup of yeast, a pinch of salt, and wet with warm milk and water stiff enough to knead.

  2. Work the dough on the board until it requires no more flour.

  3. Make the dough at night, then work it over and put it in pans early in the morning.

  4. Make rolls by working butter the size of an egg into one-third of the lump, setting it aside to rise again, then shaping it into oblong rolls and letting them rise again.

  5. Bake in a quick oven as soon as the rolls break apart.

  6. Add two or three potatoes to improve the bread.

  7. Make the sponge overnight in the center of a pan of flour with milk, warm water, and a cup of hop and potato yeast.

  8. Beat the sponge with a wooden spoon for fifteen minutes and leave it to rise overnight in a moderately warm place.

  9. In the morning, mix and knead the bread dough for half an hour, adding flour to make a stiff dough, and leave it to rise in a mass.

  10. Shape into small loaves, knead with as little flour as possible, and put in pans to rise the second time, kept moderately warm.

  11. When light, bake in a moderately hot oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

905Calories
24 gProtein
18 gFat
161 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 11 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Hopnot in our table0
Waternot in our table0
Wheatnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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. Wheat + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the yeast starter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the bread its structure.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that help the dough stay soft and rise.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast so the starter ferments.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, color and moisture to the bran mixture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the rolls and softens the crumb.

The step that matters

Shaping and the second rise. Kneading in too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, so the loaves rise less and bake up heavy. Keeping the dough moderately warm during the second rise lets the yeast produce enough gas for a light crumb.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, flour, wheat, ginger, molasses, bread. 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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