Daring bakers - Tender potato bread

This month's Daring Bakers challenge is from Tanna at My kitchen in half cups and a challenge it was, especially for a (practically) non-bread baker like myself!



Let me start out by saying that I DON'T LIKE MAKING POTATO BREAD...there, I said it... and I'm not just saying that because it's a savoury recipe but because the lack of bread baking experience frustrated me. I didn't really know how much flour to add. I kept on thinking not to add too much or the bread will end up as tough as the pizza dough I once made. The dough was supposed to be sticky, even towards the end of the kneading but how sticky exactly? This I didn't know...I kept mine pretty sticky....turned out too sticky.
I let the dough proof the first time in a cooler spot in the house because I couldn't finish the bread after 2 hours. The planning was to do that after 3 hours but as is usually the case when I plan to do something, a thing called '6-month-old-son' had his own ideas about going to sleep. So the dough proofed for 4 hours which made it MORE than double and therefor cover part of the desk I put it on. It was still sticky and soft and sort of flowy. The idea was to fill the dough, roll it up, cut it and bake like cinnamon rolls but the dough did not cooperate. At this point I was really sure I didn't add enough flour because I kept on wanting to roll the dough but the dough kept on wanting to 'flow' back. I sort of managed to fold it closed but there was no way I could cut it and transfer it to a baking tin. So it became a giant filled focaccia type of bread for lack of other possibilities. By this time it was already pretty late in the evening so I didn't have time for more proofing and baking. I put it in the fridge to slowly proof and would bake it in the morning.
The next morning it turned out that the proofing went very well and I could bake it right out of the fridge.



Even though I didn't add enough flour the bread baked well. It had pretty moist crumb and a not very crusty crust after cooling.
I thought the bread was good, it was airy, had a moist crumb and also looked appetizing with the flecks of bran from the whole meal flour. I didn't taste the potatoes, I don't know if you're supposed to taste them though. My parents loved the bread. I also served some of the bread at a high tea and my friends loved the bread a lot.
I was a bit dissapointed that the crust was not very crusty because that's the part I love about a good bread. I'm sure I will not be making this bread again because a) it's a lot of work, b) the dough is a pain to work with, and c) I like crusty crust better.
After making this bread my first feelings were to never, ever bake bread anymore... But after a while this changed into wanting to master the whole bread making thing. Not with my bread baking machine but the manual thing. Since the potato bread adventure I haven't done any bread baking (besides the machine baking) but I will definitely be doing bread baking in the future. I think I'll start with something sweet ;)

Btw the ingredients I used for the filling were: kalamata olives, walnuts, almonds, sun dried tomatoes, pepper, oregano and grana padano. I just processed them in my food processor.

You can find the potato bread recipe at Tanna's blog.