Whole Wheat Bread Lab116 recipes

Whole Wheat Bread Lab

Two overlapping styles in 116 whole wheat bread recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 116 recipes by their 6 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 116.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.23, 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 whole wheat 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 yeast, fat and sweetener to the right; 33% of the variation.
Up ↑
More liquid, salt and sweetener upward; 21% of the variation.

Along the first direction yeast, fat and sweetener 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 sweetener and fat

68 recipes · 59% of all 116 · median oven 425°F (220°C), 33 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sweetenermedian 0.8% vs 3.4% for all

    average rank: 32nd percentile of all recipes · none in 39% (all recipes 25%)

  • Fatmedian 0% vs 4.9% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 54% (all recipes 32%)

  • Yeastmedian 0.8% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 35th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 450 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Whole wheat share360 g360 g
Liquid330 g320 g
Sweetener3.5 g15 g
Fatnone22 g
Salt9 g9 g
Yeast3.5 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 450 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BWith sweetener, with fat

48 recipes · 41% of all 116 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 35 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sweetenermedian 13% vs 3.4% for all

    average rank: 76th percentile of all recipes · none in 4% (all recipes 25%)

  • Fatmedian 7.7% vs 4.9% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes · none in 2% (all recipes 32%)

  • Yeastmedian 1.7% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 71st percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 450 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Whole wheat share355 g360 g
Liquid310 g320 g
Sweetener55 g15 g
Fat34 g22 g
Salt8 g9 g
Yeast8 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 450 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 12 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 0.23 · 3 groups 0.19 · 4 groups 0.22. 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 116, 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.