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Family Graham Bread

A loaf made with mashed potatoes, wheat and Graham flour, yeast, sugar, butter, salt, cornmeal, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Family Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Make a sponge by mixing the mashed potatoes, yeast, sugar, butter, warm water, and wheat flour.

  2. Let the sponge rise overnight.

Mix and knead

  1. In the morning, add the same amount of Graham flour as white flour used in the sponge, salt, and cornmeal.

  2. Wet the mixture with the sponge.

  3. If the dough is too thick, add more warm water to achieve a soft consistency.

  4. Knead the dough thoroughly, as it takes longer to rise than white flour.

Shape, rise and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves.

  2. Knead the loaves again.

  3. Place the loaves in a warm area to rise.

  4. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) until fully cooked, as it takes longer than white bread.

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the starch and gluten structure of the sponge that leavens the dough.
Graham flour
Adds bran and whole-grain body, so the dough rises more slowly and bakes denser.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the loaf soft and help it stay fresh.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and colour to the crumb and crust.

The step that matters

Knead thoroughly and allow a full rise. Graham flour's bran cuts gluten development and slows fermentation, so under-kneading or rushing the rise leaves a heavy, dense loaf.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, wheat, flour, molasses. 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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