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Manitoba White Bread

A yeast bread made with boiled potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast cake, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Manitoba White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  2. Mix in the sugar, salt, and flour.

  3. Pour 2 quarts of boiling water over the mixture (you may use 3 quarts without changing other ingredients).

  4. Wait until the mixture is lukewarm.

  5. Add the dissolved yeast cake.

  6. Let the mixture rise in a warm place until light, usually overnight.

Make the dough

  1. Add 3 measures of flour to 1 measure of water.

  2. Let it rise 2 to 3 times.

Shape and bake

  1. Put the dough in pans.

  2. Let it rise again.

  3. Bake as usual.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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 give the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the bread its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise until light. Yeast needs a warm, lukewarm environment to grow, and the dough must be fully risen before shaping. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse and lose structure.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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