French Bread Lab138 recipes

French Bread Lab

Two styles in 138 French bread recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 138 recipes by their 5 ingredient ratios alone, so that recipes built alike land together. Each group is named only by the numbers: the ingredients where its recipes sit furthest from the middle of all 138.

The data splits best into two groups, and they separate: a silhouette of 0.39, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. They still touch at the edges, so a recipe near a boundary could sit in either.

The recipes on one map

Every recipe, placed on the two directions along which the ratios vary most (a principal component projection). Close dots are recipes built alike. The lettered rings mark the middle of each group.

AB
Across →
More fat, sugar and yeast to the right; 33% of the variation.
Up ↑
More salt, less water upward; 23% of the variation.

Along the first direction fat, sugar and yeast all rise together, each measured against the flour. A recipe sits far along it by using more of them or by using less flour, which the ratios cannot tell apart. The groups sit apart mostly along this direction.

The two groups

AClose to the overall median

112 recipes · 81% of all 138 · median oven 450°F (230°C), 22 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 0% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 42nd percentile of all recipes · none in 93% (all recipes 78%)

  • Sugarmedian 0% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 43rd percentile of all recipes · none in 82% (all recipes 71%)

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Water340 g335 g
Salt10 g10 g
Yeast3.5 g4 g
Sugarnonenone
Fatnonenone

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore fat and sugar

26 recipes · 19% of all 138 · median oven 400°F (205°C), 25 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 4.9% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 84th percentile of all recipes · none in 15% (all recipes 78%)

  • Sugarmedian 2.1% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 78th percentile of all recipes · none in 23% (all recipes 71%)

  • Yeastmedian 1.4% vs 0.8% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Water320 g335 g
Salt9 g10 g
Yeast7 g4 g
Sugar10 gnone
Fat24 gnone

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

How the groups are found

Each ratio is converted to a z-score (how many standard deviations a recipe sits from the mean), capped at 3 so one extreme recipe cannot claim a group, and k-means sorts the recipes into k groups, trying k from 2 to 4. Each k runs from 16 fixed starting points and keeps the tightest result, so the page is the same on every build. No group may hold fewer than 14 recipes.

The number of groups is the one with the best silhouette, which compares how close each recipe is to its own group with how close it is to the next one. By number of groups: 2 groups 0.39 · 3 groups 0.25 · 4 groups 0.23. At 0.25 or more the page calls the groups separate; from 0.18 to 0.25, overlapping; under 0.18, no clear styles.

A group's name lists the one to three ingredients where its recipes rank furthest from the middle of all 138, on average. “More” and “less” are relative to the whole dataset, and the names say nothing about texture or taste, which the ratios alone do not show. The median recipe of a group is, like the typical recipe on the overview, the middle of each ingredient separately, not one real recipe. The recipes listed under each group are the ones nearest its center, at most two from any one site.