Skip to main content
Main

Plain White Family Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with boiled potatoes, flour, salt, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain White Family Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Soak the yeast in warm water for 30 minutes.

  2. Peel and boil the sliced potatoes in 1 quart of water until done.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the sifted flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

  4. Mash the potatoes and stir them into the flour mixture.

  5. Once cool, stir in the yeast mixture and cover with a cloth.

  6. Let the mixture rise in a warm place until it doubles in size overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Dust a bread pan with flour, then knead the dough until it no longer clings to your hands.

  2. Shape the dough into loaves, allowing space for each to rise again.

  3. Let the loaves rise until doubled, then bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°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. 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Potatoes
Add moisture and starch, giving the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Sifted flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaves structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading until the dough no longer clings to your hands. Kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Dough kneaded too little stays sticky and rises poorly, giving a dense loaf.

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.

More potato bread recipes

Sweet 14Rolls 5Beef and Pudding 4Hop 3Hopped 3Irish 3 See all 263 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes