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Bread

Yeast for Bread

A method for making yeast from grated potatoes, flour, sugar, hops, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yeast for Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the potatoes and let the water drip off.

  2. Add flour and sugar to the potatoes.

  3. Boil hops in water for 20 minutes, then pour over the mixture.

Add yeast and salt

  1. When lukewarm, add yeast.

  2. Once it rises, mix in salt.

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).

  4. Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Supply starch and moisture that form the bulk of the dough.
Flour
Adds starch and gluten to give the mixture structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and gives off carbon dioxide, which makes the mixture rise.
Hops
Contributes bitterness and aroma to the flavour.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop it from fermenting. Lukewarm is warm enough to activate it while keeping it alive to produce the gas that makes the mixture rise.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, hops. 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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