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Bread

White Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 a gallon of the mixture

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the potatoes in plenty of water until soft.

  2. In a large jar, mix the flour, sugar, and salt.

  3. Pour the hot potato water over the mixture to scald it, then add the mashed potatoes.

  4. When cool, add enough warm water to make a gallon of the mixture.

  5. Soak the yeast cakes in 1 cup of warm water, then add to the mixture.

  6. Set the mixture in a warm place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, mold into a hard lump and let it rise.

  2. Shape into loaves and place in greased pans.

  3. Let rise again, then bake.

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. 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 moisture and starch that keep the bread soft and tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the loaves together as gluten forms.
Yeast cakes
Produce gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Setting the mixture to rise overnight in a warm place. Yeast activity depends on temperature. If the place is too cold the rise stalls, and if it is too hot the yeast ferments too fast and the bread can turn sour or collapse.

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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