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Whole Wheat Bread with Dry Yeast

A whole wheat loaf made with dry yeast, potatoes, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Whole Wheat Bread with Dry Yeast

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 starter

  1. Soak the yeast in lukewarm water with the cooked potatoes until dissolved.

  2. Mash the potatoes and stir them into the mixture.

  3. Add enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  4. Let the batter rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough

  1. Place 2 quarts of flour in a bread pan.

  2. Pour in 3 pints of warm water.

  3. Stir in the yeast batter.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  5. Mix in enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  6. Knead the dough rapidly for 10 minutes.

  7. Let the dough rise in a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into 4 loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise until light.

  3. Bake the loaves in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry yeast
Ferments sugars and releases carbon dioxide gas, which makes the dough rise.
Whole wheat flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough structure to hold its shape and trap gas.
Cooked potatoes
Their starch and moisture help keep the crumb soft and the loaf moist.

The step that matters

Let the loaves rise until light. The yeast's gas must be trapped by the dough to lift the loaves. Loaves that are underproofed stay dense, while overproofed ones may collapse in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, 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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