Potato bread for Bread Baking Day no. 17

This month's Bread Baking Day is coming to us through Lien over at Lien's Notes (Notitie van Lien). She is our charming hostess this month and chose potatoes to be the star of the show.

My first potato-bread acquaintance must have been in one of the first books I bought, Beth Hensperger using potato flakes in a bre

ad machine recipe and I remember thinking: huh, she means the dried stuff you add water to? Bought some, tried some, wasn't entirely convinced (besides that it's a great way of saving too wet

 doughs by the way) and started using real potatoes, peeled, boiled, mashed.... and was sold!

Adding potatoes to bread -or even make a starter using potato water/mashed potato- is a great way of adding a certain "je ne sais quoi" to your bread. Somehow it makes for a fluffyness in the crumb, adding moisture to the crumb without turning it to clay, and yes, firmness too. 

My absolute favourite is still the Royal Crown Tortano, but the rolls compete for first place, the one I had to get used to but liked was the pizza, so many variations possible, roasted potato bread anyone? Or a Daring bread? For old times sake (pfff) I baked a bread with potato flakes again, or rather ... two different ones, both using a matured poolish.

Poolish ingredients:

1/4 tsp instant yeast

100 gr whole wheat

100 gr bread flour

150 gr lukewarm water

Combine and mix into a stodgy paste, cover and leave at room temperature for at least two hours. I kept it for longer than that on the counter but treated it as a starter, fed it in 8 hour intervals.

Recipe potato bread no.1:

180 gr. poolish

360 gr. water

400 gr. bread flour

100 gr. dark organic whole wheat

1.3/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp instant yeast

5 tbs potato flakes

Very straight forward directions. Combine and mix on low speed using your dough hook. Switch to medium speed and knead for about 7-10 minutes. Dough cleans the bowl and will be slightly tacky. Halfway through first -bulk- rise, pull up the dough to stretch and fold over itself. Second shape-rise will take something like 45 minutes. Baked this in a loaf pan, 225C. 

Recipe potato bread no.2:

100 poolish (poolish refreshed 4 hours prior to baking with 100 gr water/100 gr flour)

350 gr. water

400 gr. bread flour

120 gr. dark whole wheat

80 gr. corn flour

100 gr. "matvete durum" (sprouted wheat berries from a can I brought from Sweden)

1 tsp instant yeast

2 tsp salt

2 tbs vegetable oil

1 tsp caraway seeds

1 tbs cracked flax seed

3 tbs potato flakes

Same mixing and rising method as the first dough. This one also cleans the bowl, but is definitely wetter than the other dough and is very sticky! I used the slapping method to get more definition and air, it needs only 2 minutes of pull and slap to turn into a nice -still sticky- but firm and elastic dough ball. Same directions for rising, I tried to shape a couronne.

We really liked the second recipe, especially with aged cheese, cold cuts slathered with a nice mustard, pesto and it even paired nicely with jam. Little warning though; needs some toasting the next day, gets stale very quickly!