Rustic potato bread with bacon and onions

When I read about the food blog event on the occasion of World Bread Day – an initiative of  Kochtopf –  I immediatly decided to take part in this and at the same time extend the bread category on this blog. In fact, I had wanted to bake my own potato bread for ages. I wanted it to be the – for me – perfect potato bread: fluffy and moist inside with a  brown crispy crust. And I should be a real potato bread – not a wheat flour bread with a bit of potato inside. Finally I wanted to give it a hearty touch to make it a real autumn bread. What I did to reach this ambitious aim was:

1. For the real potato flavour, I chose the ratio flour – potatoes to be 1:1 and mashed the potatoes only roughly.

2. For the extra rustic touch, I roasted onions together with bacon and folded them into the bread dough.

3. To get a fluffy bread, I gave the dough a lot of time to rise.

4. For an extra super crispy crust and a moist inside, I used a baking technic a I had tried out before with another bread: The trick is to bake the bread in an preheated cast iron casserole – my pride: the big cherry-red Le Creuset Casserole – with closed lid at high temperature, and open the lid for the last 15 minutes of baking.

Voilá! Here it is, my contribution to ‘World Bread Day’!

ingredients

250 g flour, 250 g starchy potatoes, 4 teaspoons dry yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 100 g yoghurt, 2 onions, 100g cubed bacon, olive oil

preparation

Cook potatoes in hot water, peel and mash them. You can mash them until they are really smooth or, if you prefer to have little bits of potato in your bread later, just mash them roughly with a fork. Let the potatoe mash cool down a bit.

Now make a starter dough: Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with yeast, sugar and roughly 4 tablespoons lukewarm water in a bowl. Let it rest for about half an hour until you have a bubbly yeast sponge.

Add the remaining flour, potatoe mash, yoghurt and salt. Possibly you will also need some more water. This will vary and is depending on the flour and the potatoes your using.  The result should be a smooth, slightly sticky dough. Cover the bowl and let dough rest for about 4 hours.

Meanwhile chop onions. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan and roast bacon and onions in it until they have a brown colour. Put the pan aside.

Now, knead the fluffy dough for a few minutes, finally knead in onions and bacon. Put baking paper in a large bowl or baking pan. Cover your hands with olive oil and form your dough into a soft ball. Put this on the baking paper and cover it with a piece of plastic wrap. Let dough rise for another 1 1/2 hours. It will also stretch out.

Put a cast iron casserole with lid onto the oven grid on the lowest rack and preheat oven to 220°C. Remove plastic wrap from dough and dust with flour. Put dough with baking paper into the casserole, close lid and put back into the oven. ( Watch your hands!) Bake potato bread for 30 minutes. Remove lid from casserole and bake for another 15 minutes. Let your bread cool out on a cooling rack.