February 2, 2016 - 11:43am
Adding Mashed Potatoes to recipe
I have been working on perfecting my cinnamon rolls and have a recipe that I love but I've been interested in incorporating mashed potatoes into it. Any ideas on how to do that? What kind of adjustments should I make? How much mashed potato is necessary? I have included my current dough recipe below.
- 1 quart Whole Milk
- 1 cup Vegetable Oil
- 1 cup Sugar
- 2 packages Active Dry Yeast, 0.25 Ounce Packets
- 8 cups (Plus 1 Cup Extra, Reserved) All-purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda
- 1 Tablespoon (heaping) Salt
Would substituting some of the milk with mashed potato water be a better idea? Would it have the same affect?
Thanks!
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Presumably some potato starch gets into the potato water, so you might notice something from that alone.
I'd suggest adding a small amount of mashed potatoes to see if you notice a difference. Maybe... half a cup? Generally I find adding potatoes softens both the crust and the crumb. They also tend to seep moisture rather than soak it up, so I try to scale back a bit on the other fluids or just keep aware I'm going to have a soft, stickier dough to work with.
Potato flour would be another way to get some of the benefit of adding potato without as many worries about adjusting the moisture.
Good luck!
I would also question why? With the whole milk, the crumb will come out soft and moist so potato is not needed as a dough enhancer, but... if you used only water, then I would use 1/2 c mashed potato in with the measurement of water or use 2 cups of the potato cooking water from cleaned and cut up potatoes. I would not use potato water from skin potatoes. Also use the potato water fresh or chilled overnight, not older.
So are you saying I could substitute two cups of the milk with potato water? I got this recipe from another source and really want to make it my own. I was thinking adding potato would be a fun way to do that. I'm fairly new at bread making though so I'll take all the suggestions I can get!
or change at a time and see where it takes your recipe.
I suppose you could sub one cup of milk for potato water and see what it does to the crumb.
Awesome, thank you!
Dear Mini,
Please say why you would avoid adding the potato skin water.
rich,
Potato water is in essence a potato starch roux; cut potatoes leech starch into the boiling water. Potatoes with peels add very little starch to the water so the addition of gelatinized starch to the bread dough is minimal if anything at all, just brown dirty water. :)
For my Swedish Kanelbullar or cinnamon buns dough I use 1 c mash potato : 3cups AFP and 70% hydration using milk. Buns and even loaf bread always turn out moist,soft and has longer shelf life even at room temperature (longest time I left last bun on the kitchen counter was 5days , when my Swedish husband forgot to eat&finish all of them in a day)
Thank you, phwriter11! So, I did some math and it looks like my recipe could be...
3.25 c milk
9 c flour
3 c mashed potato?
That seems like a lot of mashed potatoes! Should I decrease the flour some? Again, I'm new at this so I welcome suggestions!
I tried the recipe with simply replacing a cup of milk with a cup of potato water. It tasted absolutely divine but my dough shrank considerably after cooling. Any idea as to why that happened?
Hi AliciaD.Yep that seems like a big dough. I have not tried to make a bulk dough for my kanelbullars. I bake about 18 medium size buns usually good for 2 ( my Swedish husband gets half+3 share out of that lol), or equivalent to 3 loaves. i'm not sure how it will turn out if you decrease flour and alternating potato water for the milk , my working ratio using baker's math is 70% - 30% parts for my total flour, with minimum dough kneading. I am more into slap-fold-rest technique.
Just add instant potato flakes, rather than mashed potatoes.
Do you have any suggestions on how I should go about doing that? Do I just add the flakes to my wet ingredients? Do I "mash" them first? How much do you think I should add? I am only used to adding mashed potatoes so I have no idea how I'd go about using flakes. I'm intrigued!
Just mix the flakes with the flour. They will absorb water almost instantly, which is why they work better than potato starch. You will likely have to increase the liquid in the recipe. I use 15% by weight of the flour in my dinner roll recipe.
Awesome! So, I'm thinking I will add about 1 1/3 cups of potato flakes and maybe a cup of water or milk. Does that sound about right? Do you think I should I decrease the sugar content to balance out the starches in the potato?
I don't use volume measurements, so I can't confirm yours, but I do know that whenever I add them, I'm impressed at how much volume that a small mass of potato flakes occupies. When I first formulated the recipe, I added about the amount of liquid it would have taken to make mashed potatoes from the flakes. I'm sure that I've adjusted it since.
I don't see any reason to reduce the sugar, but if you're adding the flakes to the existing quantity of flour, you might need a small adjustment upward of sugar and salt. You're on the leading edge now, so you'll have to experiment. ;-)