After one year and 104 recipes, I finished the Brooks Bakes Bread Project on March 27, 2012. You can still find me baking and cooking at my new blog, Tangled Up In Food.

Archives: 14 August 2011

George Lang’s Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds
August 14, 2011

by stacy
Published on: August 14, 2011
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“This fine example of gutsy Middle European peasant bread, from The Cuisine of Hungary, is baked free form, rises well, looks appetizing, and has a delicious ‘nose’.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread

“I was too intimidated by the loaf of potato bread to cut into it, so I just ate some more Prune Bread.”
-Mike

“It’s a Frankenloaf!”
-Me

Since I still had 4 pounds of leftover potatoes, it was time to try another potato bread recipe.  This recipe is very different from Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes because it uses all white flour instead of mostly whole-wheat flour.

Here are the ingredients:

George Lang's Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds Ingredients

I boiled and mashed the potatoes beforehand to save some preparation time.  As I was attempting to knead my bread dough, I realized that I didn’t really mash them enough: there were little potato chunks poking out of my dough.  In the future, I should probably invest in a potato masher–or just use instant mashed potatoes.

George Lang’s Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds yields a fairly large loaf of bread.  Here it is after its second rising:

George Lang's Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds After Second Rising

The baking time for this recipe is 1 hour; I checked on my loaf at the 30 minute mark and realized that I was in for some trouble.

“Mike,” I said as I peered into the oven, “It’s a Frankenloaf!”

“What are you talking about?”

Then he joined me at the oven, to stare at the loaf of bread that had a strange bulge protruding like a tumor off its side, had expanded to fill the cookie sheet that it was baking on, and almost was touching the top of the oven.  Hands down, it’s the largest loaf of bread I’ve ever seen.  It was monstrous.

George Lang's Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that it is delicious: light and chewy, with the distinctive flavor of caraway seeds blending nicely with the moistness of the semi-mashed potatoes.  Because I don’t want to be eating George Lang’s Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds for the next two weeks, and also so the loaf doesn’t attack us as we sleep, I cut it into two pieces and froze one.  The half loaf fit in a gallon bag only after I had strategically hacked some pieces off the edges.

Prune Bread
August 14, 2011

by stacy
Published on: August 14, 2011
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“Like all fruit breads, [Prune Bread] is moist and rather rich and sweet.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread

The hardest part about making this bread was tracking down the ingredients.  After searching high and low for prunes, I discovered that thanks to some sort of public relations decision, prunes are now referred to as “Dried Plums.”  Next, I had to track down some sherry.  Mike and I are not big drinkers, so I didn’t have any sherry lying around the house.  I bought a bottle of sherry at the local liquor store that wasn’t ruinously expensive and popped the cork to see what it was all about.  I’m not sure if it was just the brand I purchased or if all sherry is this intense, but I think that you could get tipsy just from sniffing the fumes.  Well, I thought, this bread will certainly be interesting.

Here are the ingredients:

Prune Bread Ingredients

I diced the prunes and marinated them in sherry the night before.  If I thought the fumes out the bottle were strong, that was nothing compared to sherry fumes that have been stewing in a closed container with prunes for 24 hours.

The preparation was simple: all I had to do was mix the ingredients together.  Beard suggests using a round mold or souffle dish; since my souffle dish substitute (aka slow cooker liner) was busy cooking dinner, I just used a regular 9 x 5 loaf pan.

Prune Bread Before Baking

I set the timer for 50 minutes, but then didn’t hear it ring.  When I finally realized I should probably check on the bread, it was a little over-browned.

Prune Bread

Unfortunately, I don’t like the taste of Prune Bread at all.  I don’t mind prunes.   However, when chopped up, marinated in sherry, and baked into bread, prunes end up tasting like my food enemy, raisins.  The sherry, as far I could tell from my one slice, contributed nothing to the loaf besides turning the prunes into raisin impostors.  Mike is going to be eating this loaf.

Prune Bread

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About the Baker
I'm a paralegal living and working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. Besides baking, blogging, and eating bread, I love knitting and enjoying the Minnesota outdoors. My husband, Mike, is the Brooks Bakes Bread website developer, bread photographer, and chief taste tester.
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