Potato Bread Will Never Fail Ya

Ah, Potato Bread! The surest way I know to win friends and influence people. They will fall under the spell of your homemade potato bread, slathered in a good butter, their eyes will roll blissfully upward and you can just feel their love and admiration pulsing in your direction.

No. Seriously.

I make a lot of different styles of potato bread, but this one is the most reliable. Even if you don't know thing one about making bread, if you have a solid stand mixer, this recipe will give you two big loaves of fabulous bread. It rises only once in the bowl and once after shaped, so it can be on your table pretty quickly for homemade bread. It keeps better than any non-sourdough bread I know of, too! 

Leftovers reheat beautifully, make amazing toast, garlic bread, French toast, croutons, or the grilled-tomato bread that makes my heart pound. Please, please try it today.

You really do need a stand mixer, though. I don't think any of us are strong enough to do this one by hand. If you can, I'd like to meet you but I don't want to shake your hand. You'd kill me.

The Ultimate Potato Bread

1-1/2 pounds of russet potatoes, peels ON and well-scrubbed. 
1 Tablespoon salt plus 2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup of warm potato water (leftover from the cooking)
1 Tablespoon yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
4-3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour

Dice your potatoes into smallish cubes, cover with water, add the Tablespoon of salt, and simmer until they are tender. How long this takes will depend on how small you diced them. You knew that, right?

Reserve 1/2 cup of the potato water, and drain the potatoes. Now either spread them out on a baking sheet or leave them in the colander to dry for at least half an hour. This step is critical. If you leave them in the colander, give it a shake a few times during the half hour to rearrange the potatoes so they can all dry.

When the spuds are dry, re-warm the potato water if needed (it should be a smidgeon warmer than you are) (or exactly as warm as you are if you're running a low-grade fever?) Sprinkle the yeast over the water and stir it in gently. Let that rest about 5 minutes until it is creamy looking.

Meanwhile, plop your taters into the bowl of a great mixer like my Best Beloved and, using the mixer paddle, mash the spuds. I know it is crazy to leave those peels on there, but trust me. So mash them pretty well, add the olive oil and the rest of the salt, and just beat them until they are smooth. Some lumps don't matter at all, but the lumps should be small.

When the yeast-water is ready, add that to your potatoes and mix that in for a minute or so. Then change to the dough hook. Here's where it starts getting weird.

Add the flour, about a cup at a time, until it's incorporated into the potato mixture, taking about 3 minutes of mixing time to do that. When the 3 minutes are up, turn the mixer up to medium (you might want ear protection for the next little bit) and mix that dough for 11 minutes. 

If you're an experienced bread baker, this dough is going to look totally wrong to you for a while. But this really is going to work. 

After the 11 minutes, you'll have a soft dough that is still a little sticky. Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 30 minutes. It may not have doubled in size, but that's OK. 

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. If you have a large cast iron Dutch oven or French oven (the oval one), heat that in the oven at the same time. If you don't, then prepare a large baking sheet or two smaller ones. You can either lightly grease the pan, line it with parchment paper or sprinkle it with cornmeal.

Using well-floured hands, pull that sticky dough out onto a well-floured surface. Cut it in half and shape each loaf. A sort of football shape is traditional, but you do you. To make the traditional loaf, gently flatten the dough into a disk. Try very hard not to tear the dough on the bottom side, since that is the part that will become your beautiful crust later. Roll it up into an oblong, pinch the seam together and then gently pinch and roll the ends under a bit so that all seams are on the bottom. 

If you are using a Dutch oven for one of the loaves, then shape that loaf into whatever shape is going to fit in your Dutch oven. Then place the shaped loaf on an unrimmed baking sheet (or the back side of a rimmed sheet) or a pizza peel or you can channel me and use one of those flexible cutting mats. Whichever you use, sprinkle it well with cornmeal or flour to keep the dough from sticking. Place your loaves seam-side-down. Cover the loaf loosely with plastic or an overturned bowl big enough that the dough won't touch it. If you are baking both loaves on a sheet pans, cover them lightly with plastic. 

Let your loaves rise for 25-30 minutes. Using a very sharp knife, score a few fairly deep slits in each loaf. You aren't going to brush on any kind of crust treatment like an egg wash or heavy cream. You could if you wanted to, but the beauty of this bread is partly its papery crust.

Now, if you are using the Dutch oven method, spray the pot lightly with pan spray, slide the dough gently into the pre-heated pot and quickly as you can, plop that lid back on there. Bake the bread for 25 minutes with the lid on, uncover it and bake it the rest of the way, another 20-25 minutes uncovered.

If you are baking the loaves on baking sheets, just bake them for 40-50 minutes. Either way, the loaves should be a pretty dark brown for bread, sound hollow when gently tapped. Let them rest at least 20 minutes before slicing and then brace yourself for the wonderfulness that is about to happen.