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Bread

White Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, salt, sugar, butter, mashed potato, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the flour and make a well in the center.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, butter, mashed potato, and dissolved yeast, then mix well with a spoon.

  3. Keep warm until the mixture is light.

  4. Incorporate enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  5. Cover the dough and place in a warm area until it rises significantly.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves.

  2. Place in buttered pans.

  3. Allow to rise until light.

  4. Bake until done.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Mashed potato
Adds moisture and starch that help keep the bread soft.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Incorporate enough flour to form a stiff dough. Too little flour leaves the dough sticky and slack, so it cannot hold its shape or trap the gas the yeast produces. Too much makes the loaf dense and dry. Add flour gradually until the dough is firm but still pliable.

Swap the potato

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

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

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