We’ve had baked potatoes last Friday and many weren’t eaten. We didn’t want them to go to waste.

W piątek zrobiliśmy pieczone ziemniaki, niestety wielu nie zjedliśmy. Nie chcieliśmy, żeby się zmarnowały.

I have heard about potatoes in bread before, usually when reading about the Prądnicki Bread, a traditional type of bread made in the Kraków region of Poland. The nice thing about this loaf is that it will take any baked potatoes. It was delicious with the ones we had, which already weren’t too tasty after baking and then reheating.

Looking around for a recipe, I found a bread with potatoes in J. Hamelman’s “Bread” (sources) and decided to give it a go. I have underestimated it however: I assumed 1.5 kg of dough is not enough, so I made two portions – I ended up with four large loaves. I haven’t expected it to rise that quickly either and I have put too much dough into too small bannettons. Yeast is way more powerful than sourdough.

6.7 litre bowl – this is some rise

This recipe uses a levain called Pâte Fermentée, which could be simply called an old dough. It includes all the main ingredients of the dough (flour, yeast, water, salt), but is made earlier and left to mature. If you bake regularly, you can leave some dough aside for the next levain. I’m not sure what difference it makes compared to poolish or biga. I will have to educate myself on this.

Planning

The levain takes 12-16 hours to mature, then mixing the dough, bulk proof for 1.5 hours, shaping, 1-2 hours final rise and 40 minutes baking. Of course, you need baked potatoes.

You will need something to rise the bread in. It will rise significantly. If you made sourdough breads before, if you used X grams of dough for a final rise in your banneton/basket/bowl/colander, in this case use X/2, or at most 2*X/3 grams.

Baked potato

Ingredients

Makes two big or three smaller loaves. Remember, the dough rises by much. I recommend using two 1 kg bannetons for this amount of dough.

Levain

• 270 g strong white wheat flour

• 180 g water

• 10 g salt

• 0.5 g fresh yeast (or 1/8 teaspoon dry yeast) – picture to get a grasp of how much is 0.5 g fresh yeast is presented below. I still recommend having a sensitive scale

  0.5 g fresh yeast

Final dough

• 500 g strong white wheat flour
• 140 g wholemeal wheat flour
• 380 g water
• 10 g salt
• 10 g fresh yeast or 4 g instant yeast
• 230 g baked potatoes, with peels, diced
• all the levain

Preparation

1. Mix the levain ingredients and leave them aside for 12-16 hours (it can be a bit of dough from previous making, left to mature)

2. Mix all ingredients except the levain on lower speed of your mixer and while the dough is combining gradually add the levain bit by bit. Finish by mixing for about 3 minutes on a higher speed.

3. Leave the dough to proof for 1.5 hours. After 30-40 minutes do a single stretch and fold

4. Divide the dough and shape the loaves. Place them in dusted baskets for the final rise

5. Leave the dough for 1-2 hours. I left mines for 2 hours, I think I should have left them for 1 hour

6. Heat up your oven to 230 C degrees, top+bottom. Know your oven. If you plan to bake on a stone or in some baking dish, heat it up with the oven

7. Score the loaves and put them in the oven for about 40 minutes. Keep observing it, if the crust starts catching colour quickly, reduce the temperature to 210 C degrees. It will be ready when it makes a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom

8. Leave the bread to cool down on a cooling rack

   Baked potato bread

The bread got a nice crust in our glass baking dish, and it was very soft and moist inside. It lasted for five days before fully surrendering to a hungry bunch of omnivores. No traces of going bad. Got slightly dry on crumb surfaces, but still nice and soft inside.

I highly recommend it.