This spectacular bread was chosen as the first Bread Baking Babes' task in February 2008. What a shame that I waited until 2010 to make it. Made with bread flour, potato and a little honey, it's fabulous!
This is just before I began to knead. Note that the dough is not particularly wet, nor is the starter on the left that had been fermenting on the counter for about 14 hours. Even though Glezer doesn't call for it, I added some whole wheat flour to the dough.
Kneading the dough was not terribly difficult. (Taking the photos were!! holding the camera in one hand and sloppy dough in the other.) This is the dough before the first proofing. (Please see more photos of kneading slack dough.)
Here it is shaped and ready to be baked, just before slashing. You can see the bits of potato peel that I didn't manage to fish out while kneading. (Note to Self: peel the potato before mashing....) I was so anxious to get the bread in the oven that I forgot to take a photo after I slashed it using our sharp serrated bread knife.
Here is the baked bread. Look at those beautifully defined slashes!
Glezer says to "bake until it is a very dark brown". Perhaps I went a bit overboard on the "dark" part.
The crumb was quite moist. I think it was largely because of too high heat in the oven. I baked it at 400F (Glezer suggests 450F) til the internal temperature was around 205F; next time I'll put the oven at 375F so that the crumb can get cooked a bit more before the crust starts turning black.
We served the bread with PEI mussels steamed in white wine, onions and thyme. The Argentinian "Misterio" rosé (malbec/syrah) was the perfect accompaniment.
