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Bread

Graham Bread

A bread made from Graham flour, potatoes, yeast cake, and wheat flour, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes and reserve 3 cups of the cooking water.

  3. Stir 5 cups of Graham flour into the potato water.

  4. Mix in the yeast cake and let the mixture stand until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead in enough wheat flour to make a stiff dough, adding a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Divide the dough to make 2 loaves.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Produces gas as it feeds, making the dough rise and turn light.
Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the dough, giving a coarse, nutty, whole-grain texture.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein so the kneaded dough becomes stiff and holds its shape.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, keeping the crumb soft and the loaves moist.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand until light. The yeast releases carbon dioxide as it ferments, which gets trapped in the dough and makes it rise. If the mixture is not allowed to stand long enough, the loaves will be dense and heavy after baking.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat. 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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