24/04/2020

Sourdough Potato Bread

Name: Sourdough Potato Bread
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1015 min
Ingredients: 500 g white bread flour; 100 g rye flour; 2 tsp salt; 100 g mashed potato (at room temperature); 100 g sourdough starter; 350 ml cooking water from the potatoes (at room temperature); fine polenta or cornmeal for dusting (or use more white or rye flour)

Sourdough Potato Bread has great flavour, a moist, open crumb, and a wonderfully chewy crust. Inspired by an Italian recipe, I make it with my easy no-knead, overnight method which produces a sensational loaf of bread.

Wonderful eaten just as it is, spread with butter, in robust sandwiches, to accompany soups or with antipasti.

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Over the years, I’ve made a number of different potato breads. While none of them end up tasting of potato, which isn’t the goal anyway, working grated or mashed potato into the dough certainly adds depth of flavour. It’s also said to make the bread moister and keep it fresher for longer.

But of all the potato breads I’ve made, this Sourdough Potato Bread is by far the very best.

Real Bread

I was prompted to make a sourdough version of potato bread when I received my copy of Slow Dough: Real Bread. The author is Chris Young who’s coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign.

The Campaign’s mission is to “find and share ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet”.

It’s a beautiful book with almost one hundred bread recipes many, but not all, using sourdough starter.

It also has lots of useful information on techniques, equipment and ingredients as well as troubleshooting tips.

Pane di Patate della Garfagnana

The recipe which first caught my eye was Paolo Magazzini’s Pane di Patate. I loved the story of how, in Garfagnana in the Province of Lucca, Tuscany, Paolo makes bread based on the recipes of his mother. She had been the village baker and he was still using her fifty-odd year old madre or sourdough starter. Compared to that, my starter is still a youngster at a mere ten years old.

After a little more research, I discovered that Pane di Patate was originally produced to eke out scarce wheat flour. I’d guess this probably applies to many of the other places around the world where some form of potato bread is eaten.

The Pane di Patate della Garfagnana continues to be made in the area’s remaining family bakeries and has protected status from the Slow Food Foundation.

Read more about Paolo Magazzini and Garfagnana Potato Bread

My Sourdough Potato Bread

Pane di Patate della Garfagnana is a product of its location. Artisan bakers like Paolo use local flour and potatoes and produce the bread by traditional methods including baking the loaves in wood-fired ovens.

Of course, my own Sourdough Potato Bread, made here in the Staffordshire Moorlands, isn’t the same thing at all.

What I’ve done is adapt the recipe in Slow Dough to my no-knead, overnight method. I’ve kept the flour to mainly white bread flour with a little rye, rather than the specialist flours in the original recipe which includes fifty per cent wholemeal.

The result is a loaf that’s very much my own but, inspired by those of Garfagnana, it’s certainly amongst the best I’ve eaten.

Method

I make my Sourdough Potato Bread almost exactly the same as I do my regular sourdough loaves.

I mix up a wet dough, without kneading at all, and leave overnight. The next day it’s shaped and left in a proving basket or or cloth-lined bowl for 60-90 minutes.

When ready to cook, it’s flipped into a preheated cast iron, lidded pot and baked in a very hot oven for 30 minutes. I then take the bread out of the pot, turn down the heat and leave it to finish cooking directly on the oven shelf.

More about my no-knead, overnight method.

For the Sourdough Potato Bread, the only real difference, apart from the inclusion of mashed potato and the potato cooking water*, was that I decided to increase the amount of sourdough starter. I thought this might counteract any heaviness brought by the potato.

* Remember to drain the potatoes over a bowl or jug so you can save the cooking water. Mine nearly ended up in the sink until I remembered at the last minute!

I don’t know if it was the extra starter, or the unseasonably warm Spring weather, but after its overnight rise, my dough was incredibly lively and bubbly.

Scraping the dough from its bowl onto my floured worktop, I could see there was a beautiful network of gluten strands. This told me the bread should have a great structure.

Given how lively the dough was, I wasn’t sure there would be room in even my largest cast iron pot for the dough to rise! So, for my first attempt, I decided to make two small loaves rather than one large.

When I subsequently made one large Sourdough Potato Bread, I found it just touched the inside of the lid as it rose. Hence the slightly scorched ‘ear’.

The Finished Loaves

Both the small potato breads and the large loaf were incredibly good.

The exteriors, with their coatings of slightly grainy polenta, were wonderfully crusty.

Cutting into them, I found the classic sourdough open structure and a lovely moistness.

The aroma was so good, I had to eat a piece straightaway. The flavour was excellent: I think the potato definitely adds an extra level of complexity.

Like all good bread (to my thinking anyway) it was substantial, but not heavy, with lots of chew.

Besides eating it just as it is or spread with butter, it makes great sandwiches as well as accompanying meats, cheeses, and olives.

I really hope you’ll try making this Sourdough Potato Bread and enjoy it as much as I have.

If you’ve made Sourdough Potato Bread, leave a comment to let me know what you think.

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5 from 10 votes