The waiting is the hardest part : Tender Potato Bread

There are tons of food bloggers out there that I am in awe of and Tanna, the hostess of this month's Daring Baker challenge, is definitely one of them. She has a beautiful site, is articulate beyond belief, and! she chose a savory recipe for the challenge this month, bless her. They are my favorite.

From the book Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour & Tradition Around the World by the duo who also wrote Hot Sour Salty Sweet (now there's a good pedigree!), Tanna chose Tender Potato Bread.


You start by boiling some peeled potatos until tender. The potatos are mashed, stirred back into the potato water, and then cooled.


The flour - both white and whole wheat is added, along with salt, yeast and butter.

Tanna mentions in her recipe that the dough is a very soft dough, and boy she was not kidding. I kept adding and adding flour. It looked futile for a while, but finally the dough became smooth and elastic. I set it aside to rise. Then something came up and I had to go out. So I tossed the dough in the fridge. A few hours later I came back to dough bursting out of the bowl and sticking to the side of my fridge. This dough was definitely a riser - unlike some other doughs I've made. I set the dough on the counter to warm up and scraped down the fridge wall.

Now a batch of this dough is enough to make a large loaf of bread plus one of the following: a smaller loaf of bread, 12 buns, or a piece of foccacia. I decided to make the buns.

But then - Tragedy! My lack of confidence in the kitchen had reared it's ugly head yet again and was biting me in the ass. I hadn't added enough flour to the dough. It was sticky, so sticky I could barely get it out of the bowl. There was no way I was going to be able to form the dough into buns. The dough was SO sticky that I couldn't even pat it out into an oval and then roll it up into a loaf of bread, as directed in the recipe. I just picked up the gloppy dough as best I could (lots stuck to the counter and me) and tossed it in the pan. I poured the other piece onto a baking sheet for focaccia.

After some more rising time I preheated my oven and finished up my focaccia. I sprinkled half the dough with basil and sea salt and the other half with chopped kalamata olives and pepperoncini peppers.


Both the loaf of bread and the foccacia were lovely - the bread is chewy and has a wonderful flavor. I messed up on the foccacia and didn't put parchment paper under the dough. That resulted in losing some of the divine bottom crust. Boo!


Head over to Tanna's to see the recipe here.



Thank you Tanna for the challenge this month!

You can check out the daring bakers blogroll if you want to read other people's potato bread stories. There's about 9 trillion of us now, so get comfy!