Potato Bread Experiment
Hello,
So I've heard many a time that potato breads made with boiled and mashed potatoes aren't as good as breads made with dried potato flakes. I decided to try this myself.
The formula was as follows:
130 g starter, 18 hours old (because it's what I had, not because I planned for this or anything)
300 g bread flour blend (4% malted wheat, 25% UB AP flour, 71% medium clear bread flour)
8 g salt
30 g vegetable oil
300 g potatoes
For the potatoes, I had leftover boiled potatoes that had been sitting in potato water. I guesstimated the mixture was about 85-90% water. Thus, to replicate that, I mixed 45 g potato flakes with 255 g water.
In two separate batches, most noticeable difference was that the flakes bread was far more slack and sticky, even though the rehydrated potatoes seemed drier than the mashed potatoes.
One long fermentation over night, where they were popping out of the bowls they were put in. Shaped. I probably overworked the mashed potatoes bread – it was much stiffer than the flake potatoes bread at this point.
Flake bread is on the left, mashed potatoes is on the right.
Flakes are on top, mash on bottom.
don't look much different, but that's a big difference in the crumb. Both loaves look beautiful. I've been looking for a good potato bread recipe. Maybe I'll try the one with flakes.
Wow, thanks for performing the experiment, its a real eye opener.
I make a sweet bread that uses a small proportion of mashed potatoes...maybe I'll experiment using instant.
Thanks for posting!
Regards-
Dave
I use real mashed potatoes all the time and in my experience the real potatoes adds more moisture and creates a more open crumb. See my recent potato pretzel rolls which are the most open crumb I've achieved in that kind of roll.
I use dry roasted yellow potatoes with the skin then mash as best you can. Smooth mashed potatoes will make the crumb too dense in my experience. The 'chunky' style mash works great. I put some rye flour and caraway seeds in mine and I've gained a few pounds since discovering this bread, delicious.
have fun