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Bread

War Bread

A simple bread made with potatoes, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, shortening, and bacon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

War 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 starter

  1. Soak the yeast in a little warm water with a bit of sugar for one hour.

  2. Boil the potatoes and mash them finely.

  3. Add enough warm water to the potato water to make one quart.

  4. Combine the yeast and mashed potatoes with the water.

  5. Stir in the shortening and 2 tablespoons of white flour.

  6. Let the mixture rise overnight.

Make and rise the dough

  1. In the morning, mix in the salt and remaining sugar and flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic.

  3. Let it rise until doubled in size, then knead down and let rise again.

Bake

  1. Form into loaves and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that keep the crumb soft and help the dough hold water.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
White flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough until smooth and elastic. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes dense, while the rise times depend on that trapped gas.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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