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Bread

Potato Bread

A loaf made from mashed potatoes, sugar, yeast, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Cook and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with sugar and warm water.

  3. When lukewarm, add the yeast and enough flour to create a thick batter.

  4. Allow the mixture to rise overnight.

Knead and shape

  1. In the morning, add a pint of warm water and more flour to knead.

  2. Knead the dough until stiff.

  3. Let the dough rise again.

  4. Mold into four loaves.

Bake

  1. Bake when light.

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

Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and body, giving the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast, speeding fermentation and adding a little sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before baking. Yeast gas expands the dough, and baking before it has become light leaves the loaves dense. The record gives no timing, so judge by how light and airy the dough has become.

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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