Whole Wheat Potato Bread

I have seen potato bread recipe in many of my never ending cook book collection. And I have been waiting to make it for a long time now. All I needed was a push in the form of a request for this recipe from Suma. So, I guess I have to thank her for this. I however made it with whole wheat flour. And, I did not keep it plain and spiced it up with chillies and cilantro. See notes to the many variations that I could think of. This makes a great snack, or breakfast. And is great toasted or plain with some soup as a meal.

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Ingredients:

Potatoes - 2 medium or 1 large (enough to get 1 cup of mashed potato)

Whole Wheat flour - 4 cups plus 1/4 cup for kneading (use as needed)

Vital Wheat Gluten - 4 TBSP or 1/4 cup

Salt - 2 tsp

Warm Water - 3/4 cup (You can use the water that you used to cook potatoes)

Sour cream or yogurt - 1/2 cup

Olive Oil - 2 TBSP plus more for the bowl

Sugar - 1 TBSP

Instant yeast - 2 1/4 tsp or 1 packet

Green Chillies - 9 - 10 chopped fine (optional or you could use 1 TBSP of red pepper flakes or to taste)

Cilantro - chopped about 1/2 cup (You could use parsley or basil - See Notes)

Method:

Scrub and wash potato clean. Boil potato in enough water. You can either quarter them or keep whole. Cook till fork tender.  Drain reserving the water and peel the skin off. Mash it with a fork and measure 1 cup of it. I mashed it coarsely so that I could get couple of small pieces of potato here and there. You could make it a complete mush if you like that way. In a bowl, measure 4 cups of whole wheat flour, the vital wheat gluten, salt, sugar. Add yeast and stir. Add this mashed potato. Measure the water and sourcream or yogurt together. Stir it to combine and pour it to the contents of the bowl. With a wooden spoon, start stirring. When it becomes hard to stir, start mixing by hand. It will be a sticky mass. Once all the flour is incorporated, dump it on to the lightly floured surface. Start kneading adding flour if required to get a smooth tacky dough. Tacky dough will stick to your fingers, but will peel off. Work the chopped chillies if using. Finally mix in the cilantro or the choice of herb you are using and give a final knead. Coat the bowl with olive oil and place the dough in there turning once to coat all the sides. Cover and let rise till double or for 1 1/2 hours. It might take longer in cold weather.

When it has doubled, punch down and divide the dough into two parts. You can either shape it as a baguette like I did or make two round loafs or use loaf pans. I shaped them into fat 11" baguettes. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 400 F. Slash the loaf and place in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes. Turn the temperature down to 350 and bake for 30 - 35 minutes or until golden and internal temperature is 190 - 210 F. Cool on the wire rack. This was great as is and definitely great with a bowl of soup. Since there is potato in this, shelf life of this bread is not long. Use within 2 - 3 days.

Notes:

You could make it a sweeter bread by increasing the sugar and you could also increase the fat content. If you are one of those who are scared of whole wheat flour breads and want to make this with all purpose flour, you will have to increase the flour more or reduce the water to 1/2 cup and use 1/2 cup yogurt or sourcream. Start with 3 cups of flour in the beginning if you reduced the water.

Another variation is to use rosemary. Potatoes and rosemary go very well together. But use only 2 TBSP chopped fresh rosemary. If using parsley, you could use it as generously as I have used cilantro. If making it a sweet bread, use about 4 TBSP of sugar and reduce the salt to 1 1/2 tsp.

These loaves are yeastspotted.

Enjoy.

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