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Bread

Wheat Bread

A yeast-leavened wheat bread with potatoes, sugar, salt, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Wheat Bread

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 ↓

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Soak the yeast in warm water until dissolved.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a batter.

  3. Pour boiling potato water over 1 cup of flour. Stir well.

  4. Add the mashed potatoes. Let cool.

  5. Stir in the yeast.

  6. In a large bowl, combine 1 quart of warm water with enough flour to make a batter that drops from a spoon.

  7. Add the yeast sponge.

Make the dough

  1. When the mixture is light, add 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of salt.

  3. Add 1 large spoonful of melted lard.

  4. Mix in enough flour to form a dough.

  5. Knead the dough until smooth.

  6. Set it aside to rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, place the dough into pans.

  2. Check that the dough does not retain the pressure of a finger when poked.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one 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.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 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 sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the bread soft and moist.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Checking the rise before shaping. The dough must be light and airy before it goes into pans. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse, so the finger-poke test helps judge readiness.

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.

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