This is a dense, yet moist and tender bread, with lots of flavor, perfect for morning toast and jam, along with your morning coffee. Nick has always chosen a potato bread from the grocery store for his bread preference, and I have frequently used potato water to proof my yeast, or potato flour or starch in with the flour for extra tenderness in a lot of my bread baking, so taking it a bit further was a natural stepping stone. For this bread, I use the whole potato, but I do peel the potato first.
It is also very good as a side for the soups that I have been craving and making lately.
Potato Toasting Bread
1 medium large russet potato, peeled and cubed to 1” pieces
1 1/4 C reserved potato water
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast (also known as bread machine yeast)
2 T sugar
2 T butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C dry instant milk powder
3 1/2 - 4 C unbleached bread flour (King Arthur is my favorite).
olive oil and/or non-stick spray for greasing bowl and (2) - 4 1/2” X 8 1/2” loaf pans
Place potato in a small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook for approximately 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain potato water into a heat resistant 2 cup measuring cup. Add enough water to measure 1 1/4 cup. Set aside to cool to 110 degrees (cool enough that you can keep your finger in it). Add yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar to potato water when it has cooled and set aside until foamy. Mash potato until smooth with a fork, adding in 2 T butter and remaining sugar. In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour, powdered milk and salt. Stir together yeast mixture and potato mixture and add to flour mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon, mixing until it all comes together. Add in 1 cup flour and stir it in. At this point, I like to turn the dough out onto a floured rolling mat and begin kneading it, adding in enough of the remaining flour to come together into a smooth and elastic ball, tacky, but not sticky, kneading for about 8 – 10 minutes. It will be a soft dough. Put dough into a bowl greased with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, turning to grease all, lightly cover, and let raise until double, anywhere from 30 – 90 minutes, depending on temperature in your kitchen. When double, gently deflate and divide in half, gently shaping to fit into pans. Lightly cover with plastic wrap and let raise until 1/2” taller than pan. Preheat your convection oven to 375 degrees. When oven is ready, bake bread for 28 – 30 minutes until darkly golden brown. Turn out of pan onto a cooling rack and let cool for at least 20 minutes before any attempt is made to cut it. For a softer crust, lightly butter the tops of your bread. Cool completely before storing.
I have found that my convection oven (a 2001 model GE Profile) takes exactly 28 minutes to bring my bread to perfection. If you have an instant read thermometer (You can get a simple one at most grocery or department stores for $8-10), you want your bread to be at 195 – 205 degrees. You can just poke it into your baked item for a quick reading, to know for sure if it has reached the proper temperature. It has helped me to make sure my bread (and meat) gets done, as I have adjusted to convection cooking. I also keep a small spray bottle in my kitchen to mist water over my bread just before it goes in the oven. It helps to give a head start to the baking process, speeding up the initial rise on the height of the bread. This bread is easily mixed by hand, but also does fine with a dough hook in your mixer. Personally, I enjoy the kneading process. It is very soothing and a great stress reliever.
Please be patient with me as I try to develop a semi-regular blog. I will try to include recipes that are simple but delicious, and easy to put together for convenience in your RV. But I also enjoy working with fresh vegetables, breads, pasta, beans, meats, and of course, a few sweets, too. Nick does have his needs, you know. I’ll also include a recipe for a wonderful butternut and acorn squash soup that I made, in one of the next blogs. I hope you enjoy.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Let me be the first to say… WOOHOO Congrats Terry on your first (of hopefully many) yummy posts. Made me hungry for potato bread just reading it. Now all I have to do is find time to cook. Maybe you’ll inspire me. Great post. Hugs.
Oh happy day! I have waited for this for SOOO long Terry! You are my hero. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
I am so excited Terry! I have been a silent admirer for a long long time and I hope to see many many more of your recipes. And if you ever do a cookbook I want the very first copy off the press!
You made those loaves in a convection oven! No way! I have never even considered baking in mine even though they keep saying it can be done. Now I believe it. I am going to try baking some first thing in the morning. Thanks so very much for sharing Terri.
Thankyou, Miss Terry! Looking forward to reading all of your blogs, same as I do Nicks!
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. I love baking bread and always look for new recipe’s. I can’t wait to try this one, but it will have to wait till we are on the road. Nine more days and we are FULL-TIMERS, that is if this snow ever stops! Keep those recipe’s coming and when you do a cookbook…make it digital as well, so it won’t take up much room in the RV. Great job Terry.
Crystal and I enjoyed visiting Terry’s Kitchen this morning. We’ve always looked forward to Nick’s bread and butter blogs now we can look forward to the occassional spice from Terry’s Kitchen.
Sweet!
Terry, Congratulations on starting your blog! I’m not much of a cook, but I do enjoy ‘performing’ a recipe once in a while. So, I’ll be a regular reader and look forward to your future culinary messages. Keep up the good work! (Oh, did I really use that 4-letter word?)
thanks for the recipe….I look forward to trying it…I just have one question when you give the temperature to cook or bake it for the convectional oven, is that the same as a regular oven…it is all I have….thanks….
Hurray for you! We know it isn’t always easy to get on a new campaign like this one, so good job, Terry! And the bread recipe looks delicious. I’ve loved my convection oven ever since we got it with our motorhome nearly nine years ago. So glad you are getting into yours for good cooking!
Congratulations on the new web site. I love the bread and may even try to make it, Mike drooled at the site and wished he could have sampled some with butter and jelly. Keep up the good work,
Great timing, Terry! I’ve just recently gotten interested in baking healthful things in the convection oven. It’ll be great to follow your tried and true recipes.
Adding my congratulations on the blog. You have a library of recipes from years of GJ recipes that can be re-posted here. Photos are great, too. I’m not a baker, but I DO enjoy reading recipes, so maybe this will get me motivated. One suggestion, when you have looooong directions, split the text into shorter paragraphs to help keep the “readability” easier. Can Chris Guild set you up with a searchable index for your part of the website? Look forward to future recipes.
Love the directions and pictures! I have smaller loaf pans so I will try and use those before I go out and purchase some other pans. Always used to make bread in the bread machine when we lived in the stick house, but never made it in my convection oven yet. Am looking forward to doing that and am very happy to see your recipes up and running!!! 🙂
Great ! I’m so glad you decided to blog. I saw the first pictures of the potato bread & wished for the recipe. Thanks! Now it’s even better ! It’s for the convection oven that I’ve been afraid to use ! Do you have other bread recipe’s for the convection oven? I’d love to try them.
Miss Terry, I am so happy you took this step, starting your blog. So many of us have been hoping you would! What a great recipe for potato bread….Keep up the good work, and we will all be reading and cooking! Hope to meet you guys one day. You inspire us, and already we have stayed some places and done some things we really enjoyed on the strength of your Nick’s recommendation in his blog. I’d love your cookbook, too!
Thank you so much for sharing! I look forward to learn how to cook in a microwave convection oven. Can you also tell us what baking pans (size and kind) you have. As we get ready to fulltime and get our RV this would be a wonderful addition!
Thanks from me, too! I love all the extra tips and tricks you included. Also that you specified the temp is for convection, which we have. This bread looks just yummy, and I can’t wait to try it!
Howdy Miss Terry, ma’m,
Congratulations on the new cooking blog..YOU DUN GOOD GIRL!! As CoolJudy sez tho’, it will ‘read better’ with shorter paragraphs(can’t help being an editor).. All
directions are very clear and precise.. Nick sez he don’t like veggies, grind’em up and sneak’em in in breads, cakes, cookies,etc.. Ever heard of winecake? Itz made with BEETS and THE SCHOOLKIDS LOVE IT!!! buleve it or not!!!
Thank you, for beginning the blog, now maybe we’ll get a cookbook out of it!!!
Hi Terry; This looks just perfect… lots of detail, a couple of pictures and your personal comments. We will appreciate the effort I know it takes to do this. AND if is only 9 months since we all urged you to take the plunge into a recipe blog. lol. Can’t wait to see you in AZ.
I looked at the bread picture and my stomach growled! 🙂 Congratulations on beginning your blogging — I look forward to more of your recipes.
Thanks so much for sharing your bread recipe. I look forward to trying it out. I love the pictures. If you do a cookbook I hope you include many pictures in it too. Right now I’m sooo hungry and the picture is really making me drool. 🙂
Hi Terry . You inpired me to make some potato bread, and I did just that.
I am a regular bread baker at home and usually make a white bread. I experiment once in a while with other ingredients I have on hand. I tend not to follow any recipe exactly and give it my kind of twist. My most recent experiment was to substitute in a cup of quick oats and a half cup of molasses in place of any sugar. Turned out great I thought. Looked more like a wheat bread from the molasses coloring with a little added texture from the oats.
Okay, back to the potato bread, I used 2 potatoes and a cup of milk but the rest was basicly the same. Seemed to be a lot stickier dough to work with, but baked up great. The holes in the bread a larger but still evenly spaced and it has a springy feel to it – more like what we call an english muffin (Canada – eh). But the taste is superb. Really good as toast with a little butter and strawberry jam from our garden.
Thanks for writing and I for one will be looking forward to more.
Regards, Al Hays (aka Daddio of the Patio)