Skip to main content
Bread

Lightning Yeast

A potato-based yeast dough loaf made with boiled potatoes, flour, salt, sugar, water, yeast foam, lard, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lightning Yeast

2 loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato starter

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with flour, salt, and sugar.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

  4. Add ½ pint of boiling water.

  5. Beat again.

  6. Stir in 1 pint of boiling water.

  7. Cool by adding 1 pint of cold water.

  8. Dissolve the Yeast Foam in ¼ cup of tepid water.

  9. Add the dissolved yeast mixture to the dough.

  10. Let the dough stand in a warm place for about 10 hours.

Shape and prove

  1. In the morning, take ½ cup of yeast and ½ pint of water for 2 loaves.

  2. Add a pinch of salt, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of lard to each loaf.

  3. Mix the dough into a large loaf shape.

  4. Mold until it does not stick to the board.

  5. Keep the loaf in a warm place until it rises.

  6. Mold into loaves.

  7. Keep the loaves warm until ready for the oven.

Bake

  1. Bake for 50 to 60 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

Boiled potatoes
Add starch and moisture that help the dough stay soft and hold gas.
Flour
Provides the gluten-forming protein that gives the dough its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, which makes the dough rise.
Lard
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

Shaping until the dough no longer sticks to the board. Kneading develops gluten so the dough holds gas. Dough that is still sticky is under-developed and may collapse or bake dense, so work it until it is smooth and firm enough to hold its shape.

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.

You might also like

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipes