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Bread

White Bread

A loaf of bread made with flour, sugar, salt, mashed potatoes, yeast, lard, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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White 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 ↓

White Bread

makes 1 quart of liquid

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the flour, sugar, and salt with boiling hot potato water and add the mashed potatoes.

  2. Add enough water to make a total of 1 quart and let it cool.

  3. Dissolve the yeast foam in ½ cup of lukewarm water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in flour to create a stiff batter, beat thoroughly, and let rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough and bake

  1. In the morning, add ½ cup of lard and enough flour to form a dough, kneading until it no longer sticks to your hands.

  2. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, then shape it into loaves.

  3. Bake the loaves 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. Sugar + potatotop 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

Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its body.
Yeast foam
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and starch that keep the bread soft and fresh.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Kneading until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap gas from the yeast. Too little kneading leaves a dense, weak loaf, while the right amount gives a smooth, elastic dough that rises well.

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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