“The potatoes help the bread to rise and give it a wonderful, moist texture.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread
After a much-needed vacation to Colorado, I was ready to get back in the swing of things and bake some bread. I had a nearly-full carton buttermilk in the fridge that was fast approaching its expiration date, so I decided to bake Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes solely because the recipe calls for 3 cups of buttermilk.
Here are the ingredients:
The recipe calls for one pound of potatoes, or 2 medium potatoes. I bought a 5 pound bag which happened to contain exactly 25 potatoes, so I used five small potatoes (I was much happier about the fact that I had an evenly divisible number of potatoes than I should have been–my inner math nerd). The recipe also calls for 1 to 2 tablespoons of salt. Since Beard’s recipes run on the salty side, I only used 1 tablespoon.
Since the Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes requires a whopping 10 cups of flour, it makes a lot of dough. I wasn’t completely sure that it would all fit in my mixing bowl, so I mixed the ingredients in my stock pot. I think that the mixing bowl probably would have had the capacity, but the flour would have ended up strewn about the kitchen as I stirred.
After some kneading, some rising, more kneading, being shaped into loaves, and then rising again, the bread was ready to go into the oven. Since I have had problems with the bottom of my free-form loaves separating from the top, I used a slightly different shaping technique: I patted the dough into a circle and then gathered the edges together to form a ball. I also spread a thick layer of cornmeal across the baking sheet.
After 25 minutes, my bread was finished–and both loaves came off the cookie sheet in one piece!
Even though you’re supposed to thoroughly cool the bread before slicing, I couldn’t resist. Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes is really an excellent whole-wheat bread. It is incredibly moist with a nice wholesome flavor. One tablespoon of salt was definitely adequate–I think that using more would have been overpowering. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s dinner of corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, cold cuts, and Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes!
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