It’s been an eventful couple of weeks here, especially weather-wise. We’ve had thunderstorms galore, the Rhine and surrounding rivers have been rising to threatening heights. We’re hoping the rain will stop soon and that we will have something more deserving of the term summer then. One good thing that comes with all the rain is that I’ve hardly had to do any irrigating these past weeks on the terrace. My tomatoes, zucchini plants and herbs have been growing on their own. My current favorite is the lettuce pot, which I planted from seeds I bought in Italy. As you can see, I totally overdid it and how have way too many plants all in one place. But no worries, I’ve been picking out leaves here and there to feed Yoshi and even made a salad for us. The leaves are incredibly thin and very soft, when I feed Yoshi with them, he squeaks with joy and flaps his wings, just like he did when he we used to feed him as a chick. Yeah, the lettuce is that good!

With the weather this glum and the bread in our fridge diminishing by the day until it was almost depleted, I organized a baking marathon in my kitchen. I listened to Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine and tried out a recipe I’d been told about last fall: Potato Bread.

I was curious, because the friend who sent the recipe said it included both grated raw potatoes.  And boiled mashed potatoes. I love anything with potatoes, and the idea of a potato bread really appealed to me, so this weekend I finally had the chance to taste it myself.I did tweak the recipe a bit according to my own feelings concerning looks and texture and am happy to present it here on the blog. Next time, I’m making it one part of the raw potatoes replaced with raw carrots for an extra lush texture? I’ll also add pumpkin seeds, perhaps even some grated pumpkin, rendering an entirely different product using the same simple recipe. Like all good bread recipes, this one is vegan! 🙂 Like Fiona Apple song’s says: “Be kind to me, or treat me mean, I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine”.

Gluten-free Potato Bread
Ingredients:
9g dry-active yeast (that’s one package)
100 ml soda water
2 tbsp sugar
250g raw potatoes, finely grated
250g boiled potatoes, mashed while still hot (then allow to cool to room temperature)
150g corn starch
75g rice flour
50g buckwheat flour
1 tsp gluten-free helpers
25g whole linseeds
25g sesame seeds
50g sunflower seeds
2 tsp salt dissolved in 20ml mineralwater

Preparation:
Place the sugar and the yeast into a bowl, dissolve in the soda water using a whisk.

In a second bowl, combine the cornstarch, rice and buckwheat flours with the gluten-free helpers and place onto the yeast-sugar water. Add the seeds and proceed to knead into a smooth dough. Add the dissolved salt and continue to knead for a few minutes until the liquid has been fully incorporated.

If you have a fermentation basket, dust it with a bit of gluten-free flour, and place the dough in the fermentation basket. Cover with a humid textile kitchen towel and allow dough to rise for about half an hour.

Line a baking sheet with baking parchment or set baking parchment out on the counter and form into an oval, about as long as your bread tin. Set your oven to 200°C. Place an oven-proof dish filled with water onto the bottom of your oven.

Uncover potato bread dough, and carefully place onto the baking parchment. Using a large, sharp knife cut six long indentations into the loaf of bread. Carefully lift baking parchment and stuff loaf into a bread tin.

Place loaf of bread into the oven and bake for fifty minutes. Remove load from bread tin and bake for another ten minutes or until done. (If you knock on the bottom of the bread it should make a hollow sound, that is how you know it is done).

I found this bread to be particularly tasty with a bit of butter and a pinch of salt. So good!