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Quickly Made Bread

A quick yeast bread made with potatoes, flour, salt, water, milk, and yeast cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Quickly Made Bread

three good sized loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. In a quart bowl, combine a teaspoonful of salt, sugar, soda, ginger, and a teacupful of coarse flour.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until a thick batter forms; cover and let sit until lukewarm.

  3. If the batter has set like pudding, add a little warm water and stir until thin; keep warm until ready.

  4. Prepare yeast risings (from earlier step).

Make the dough

  1. In a bread pan, sift flour to fill two-thirds full; make a hollow in the center and add a small tablespoonful of salt.

  2. Pour a pint of boiling water into the pan, stirring into the flour; add half a pint of milk.

  3. Add hot water to bring the total to a pint, then another pint of water, at a temperature that cools the sponge but keeps yeast alive.

  4. Stir in one-third of the yeast; cover with dry flour; then cover with a bread board or another pan and let rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold into loaves; let rise again; bake in a brisk oven until browned, about twenty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

765Calories
25 gProtein
9 gFat
144 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 6 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Cakenot 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 Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Adds richness and helps the crumb brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Keeping the water temperature right when mixing the sponge and dough. Water that is too hot kills yeast and stops the rise, while water that is too cool slows fermentation. Warm liquid lets the yeast work steadily, so the loaves rise properly before baking.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, 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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