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Potato Bread

A loaf made from boiled potatoes, yeast, flour, salt, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Bread

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 ↓

Potato Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes through a colander.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in ½ cup lukewarm water and add it to the potatoes along with 2½ quarts lukewarm water.

  3. Add enough flour to achieve the thickness of sponge cake and beat for 10 minutes.

  4. Let the mixture rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add salt, sugar, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 30 minutes.

  3. Place the dough in a warm area to rise without covering it.

  4. Once risen, shape the dough into loaves without kneading.

Bake the loaves

  1. Place the loaves in pans and score them with a fork several times.

  2. Allow the loaves to rise until sufficiently puffed.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes, then rotate the pans and bake for an additional 15 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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, helping the bread stay soft and moist after baking.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the sponge and dough rise.
Flour
Forms gluten with the water, giving the batter and dough structure to hold gas.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Overnight sponge rise. The sponge needs a warm place to ferment long enough for the yeast to build gas and flavor. Too cool and it stalls, leaving a dense loaf.

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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