German potato bread (kartoffelbrot)

I haven’t been baking a lot in the past few weeks because I’ve been on holiday! Don’t get too excited, we only popped on down to Cardiff in the car, but it was a fun trip involving lots of Cardiff history and a fair bit of food. And the biggest Chelsea bun I’ve seen in a long time.

So, back home this week and to the recipe book that I ordered before I went on holiday. I always like a good bit of the Hairy Bikers and this recipe for German potato bread (aka kartoffelbrot) took my fancy, mostly because I was wondering how mashed potato in bread would turn out.

Potatoes peeled, chopped and in boiling water, it was time not to screw this first but rather important step. Because, after the potatoes were cooked (but not absolutely falling to pieces), they needed draining well (with some of the cooking liquid reserved) and returning to the heat to evaporate off the excess water. Why is this so important, I hear you ask? Well, I’ve tried making potato dumplings before and didn’t follow the instructions with all this evaporating, but wet potato has an amazing ability to absorb however much flour you throw into it and remain a sticky mess. I didn’t want a repeat of said dumpling incident so I was thorough with evaporating off the water this time. All seemed to go well; by the time I’d finished with it (1 tablespoon of sunflower oil added), I had a smooth but firm lot of mashed potato ready to go in my dough.

Now I just had to wait for the cooking liquid to cook down until it was a yeast-friendly temperature. Which took a while. So I twiddled my thumbs and bashed the potatoes to pieces some more. When it eventually got there, I crumbled in the yeast and added a teaspoon of caster sugar, then did my best to find the warmest room in the house (often a challenge) for it to sit in for 10 minutes.

Finally the various elements were ready and everything was weighed out. Time to combine. I put 1 teaspoon salt into the pan with the mashed potato, then the yeast mixture... then though “Oh ****, I hope that salt wasn’t too concentrated on the top, I don’t want dead yeast”, so I stirred it all together pretty fast. Time for the ingredient that’s normally pretty important in bread... flour. 200g strong white flour and 100g strong wholemeal flour got added and stirred in a tablespoon at a time, until the mix became incredibly stiff. This was actually before I’d got about half of the flour in, so I turned the dough ball into the flour bowl and kneaded it in the hope that it’d take on the flour gradually. It sort of did before I then turned it onto the worktop and carried on kneading in the rest of the flour, worrying that the dough wasn’t moist enough to take it all up.

There was no need to worry on that front, and it was actually a good job I hadn’t added any more water, because 5 minutes of kneading and the dough was sticking to my hands so much that I was about ready to fling it across the room. I even resorted to adding more flour (and, in the process, covered the cupboard door with dough) and, after kneading for the amount of time I’d usually knead, gave up trying to get it into a coherent ball and simply dumped it into the bowl to prove.

I calmed down a little bit after the hour, especially when I saw that the dough had risen nicely. The time sat in the bowl had also let the flour absorb a little more of the moisture, so it wasn’t as hard to handle when I turned it out (onto a well-oiled surface, mind you). It got formed into a sausage which was then sliced into 3, with the top left intact so that it could be plaited. It went back onto a baking tray to double in size (a very specific baking tray, mind you... the big oven was still broken) and again it puffed up nicely. It received a sprinkling of flour (but no onion seeds, as specified in the recipe, because I didn’t have any and the shops in the village couldn’t quite manage them) before going in the (narrow) oven at 220°C for 35 minutes.

We let it cool down just enough to not collapse completely when cut (lunch had been delayed specially for this bread), and I was probably rather stupidly surprised that there weren’t any traces of potato to be seen. Instead I had a very fluffy, light loaf with a slight sweetness to it and a great crust. It’s kept well too, as I’m writing a few days later now and the bread still has a nice texture, although the crust has gone soft and it’s not quite as fluffy. Potato bread has definitely been a success... no repeats of the horrible dumpling incident this time.

Simplified recipe

Ingredients

375g potatoes (good mashers, Maris Piper if you can get them), peeled and evenly chopped. Peeled weight should be 300g

1 teaspoon fast-action yeast or 10g fresh yeast

1 teaspoon caster sugar

1 tablespoon sunflower oil, with a little extra for greasing

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

300 strong white bread flour, or 200g strong white bread flour and 100g wholemeal bread flour

1 teaspoon onion seeds (optional)

Method

1.       Put the potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with coldwater and place on the heat. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook the potatoes for 15-20 minutes until soft but not falling apart. Drain but reserve the liquid. Return the pan to the heat for 2-3 minutes and stir often to help evaporate off any excess liquid

2.       Let the cooking liquid cool down until it’s luke warm, then measure out 75ml of the liquid (90ml if you’re using a portion of wholemeal flour)

3.       Stir the yeast into the liquid, followed by the sugar, then leave in a warm place for 10 minutes until foam starts appearing on the surface

4.       Grab your pan of drained, dried potatoes and add the sunflower oil, then mash the potatoes to within an inch of their life, until as smooth as possible. Stir in the yeast mixture, then stir in the salt

5.       Start stirring in the flour a tablespoon at a time. When the mix becomes too stiff to stir, turn out onto a work surface and continue to work in the remaining flour. Continue to knead the dough for 10 minutes “until soft and pliable”. Place in a lightly oiled mixing bowl, cover and leave in a warm place to double in size

6.       Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled worktop and knead gently to knock it back. Shape it into your preferred loaf shape (I plaited mine), then place on a greased baking tray (or in a tine, if your prefer), cover and leave to double in size again (about 30 minutes this time)

7.       Preheat your oven to 220°C (425°F or gas mark 7)

8.       Dust your loaf with wholemeal flour and, if you’ve got them, cover it in a sprinkling of onion seeds. Score your loaf if necessary, then bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes until golden, crusty and hollow sounding

References

The Hairy Bikers’ Big Book of Baking, Si King and Dave Myers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012