Skip to main content
Main

White Breads

A recipe for making white bread using yeast, flour, water, milk, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Cook the potatoes and mash them fine.

  2. Save the potato water and add enough lukewarm water to make eight teacupfuls.

  3. Add salt, sugar and the mashed potatoes; mix thoroughly and add the yeast cake broken into small pieces.

  4. Add flour to make a stiff dough; let rise overnight, or from eight to nine hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and turn them over in warmed lard in the pans.

  2. Let the loaves rise in a warm place about one hour, or until they have doubled in bulk.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven about forty-five minutes.

  4. Take the loaves out of the pans and grease them with lard.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

682Calories
27 gProtein
14 gFat
108 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
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
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 Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog]. 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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 dough's structure, which traps gas so the loaves can rise and hold their shape.
Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and gives the bread its airy crumb.
Mashed potatoes (in the method)
Add moisture and starch that keep the crumb soft and help the bread stay fresh.
Lard (in the method)
Greases the pans and coats the loaves, adding fat that softens the crust and aids browning.

The step that matters

Let the loaves rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas; underproofed loaves stay dense and may collapse or crack in the oven, while overproofed ones lose structure.

“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.

More white bread recipes

Plain 11Manitoba 3 See all 90 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes