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| Potatoes! |
I am a little behind in my blogging (a baking backlog if you will) so this is going to be a shorter blog. Jake came up with the name “blogette” for a substantially shorter baking blog (like baguette, get it?), so that’s what this will be. After the excess, extravagance, and expense of the holidays, it seems rather fitting to have blogette about simple sandwich bread.
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After making the sweet, chocolatey, eggy Challah bread, I was excited to make a basic sandwich bread. Recipe# 5 in the Tassajara Bread book, is a Potato bread, which is to me one of the best sandwich breads around. It is moist enough to create a soft sandwich, but not too soft to get completely soggy. This bread is made by boiling potatoes until fork-soft and then mashing them and folding them into the dough after the first rise, and the oil and salt have been added. These loaves were quick to go in our fridge, and I found myself craving a sandwich almost daily. This bread also makes excellent French toast (almost rivaling Challah French toast), as it is very absorbent and sops up the egg/milk/cinnamon mixture with ease.
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Potato Bread
Tassajara Recipe #5
2 packages dry yeast
¼ cup honey
1 cup dry milk
3 cups unbleached white flour
4 teaspoons salt
¼ cup oil
1 ½ to 2 cups cooked mashed potatoes
3 cups unbleached white flour
1 cup or more white flour for kneading
Dissolve the yeast in the water.
Stir in the sweetening and dry milk (it’s ok if it’s a little lumpy)
Stir in the 4 cups of whole wheat flour to form a thick batter.
Beat well with a spoon (100 strokes). Duck the spoon down along the side and carry it over, keeping the dough in one piece.
Let rise 45 minutes.
Fold in the salt and oil and the mashed potatoes.
Fold in an additional 3 cups flour until the dough comes away from the side of the bowl.
Knead on a floured board, using more flour (about 1 cup) as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the board (about 10 minutes), until the dough is smooth.
Let rise 50-60 minutes until doubled in size.
Punch down.
Let rise 45-50 minutes until doubled in size.
Cut the dough in half and knead each half about 6 more times. Roll the dough into a log, pinching the seam along the bottom half. Place the loaf seam side up in a greased pan and then flip over so the seam is on the bottom.
Brush top of the loaves with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water).
Bake in the oven at 325 degrees for about an hour, until golden brown.
Remove from pans and let cool—or eat right away.
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