White Sandwich Bread Lab150 recipes

White Sandwich Bread Lab

Two overlapping styles in 150 white sandwich bread recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 150 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 150.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.19, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. Read them as tendencies within one broad spread rather than separate kinds of white sandwich bread.

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 liquid, sugar and salt to the right; 30% of the variation.
Up ↑
More fat upward; 20% of the variation.

Along the first direction liquid, sugar and salt 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

ALess liquid and sugar

87 recipes · 58% of all 150 · median oven 400°F (205°C), 30 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Liquidmedian 61% vs 64% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 2.5% vs 4.2% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.2% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 40th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Liquid305 g320 g
Fat36 g40 g
Sugar13 g21 g
Salt9 g10 g
Yeast6 g7 g

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

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore liquid and sugar

63 recipes · 42% of all 150 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 33 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Liquidmedian 71% vs 64% for all

    average rank: 69th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 6.7% vs 4.2% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.7% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 63rd 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
Liquid355 g320 g
Fat50 g40 g
Sugar34 g21 g
Salt10 g10 g
Yeast9 g7 g

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 15 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 0.19 · 3 groups 0.15 · 4 groups 0.17. 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 150, 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.