I’m on a roll when it comes to making food for Saint Patrick’s Day. First there was the Irish soda bread and then the shamrock-shaped key lime bars. Now I’m making potato bread dinner rolls.
The Story
Mashed, roasted, baked and even fried, I love potatoes in any shape or form. Then I realized you can bake them in bread. The only thing better than potatoes is potatoes and bread together!
My passion for potatoes may come from being deprived of them as a child. It’s not like there was a potato famine or anything. We just always had those fake potato flakes instead. However, they are not even close to the real thing.
I also never had a Mr. Potato Head. When I would visit friends who did, I loved to change his parts and make different faces for him.
Having a Mr. Potato Head is a lot like making bread. Simply change a few ingredients, and you have a whole new bread. I’ve made different kinds of breads before – of both the quick and yeast varieties – but I have never made potato bread until now.
The Moral of the Story
Mix it up a bit. Try a new variation on an old recipe.
About the Recipe
For my first potato bread, I made the Potato Bread III recipe from Allrecipes. The only change I made to the original recipe was to reduce the salt by ½ a tablespoon and add ½ tablespoon garlic salt. I had garlic mashed potatoes on my mind.
The Cast of Characters
Potato is at the head of the class for this recipe.
The Play-by-Play
Peel the potato, and dice it into cubes.
Boil the potatoes in water for about 12 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
Remove the potatoes and water from the heat, and let them cool to 110 degrees. Place 1/2 cup of the potato water into a large bowl and sprinkle it with the yeast.
In the remaining water, mash the potatoes.
In a measuring cup, add the mashed potatoes and more water to equal two cups.
In your stand mixer bowl, add the yeast mixture, potato, 2 cups flour, sugar, shortening and salt. Beat at low speed for 1/2 minute and on high for 3 minutes.
Add the remaining flour and continue mixing until a stiff dough forms.
With a dough hook, knead the dough for 6 to 8 minutes, until it gathers on the hook.
Place dough into a greased bowl, and cover it with a towel.
Let it rise for about an hour or until double in size.
Punch the dough down, cover it again, and let it rest for 10 more minutes.
Shape the dough into rolls. Place them on a greased baking sheet. Cover them again, and let rise them for 35 to 40 minutes more.
Bake the rolls for 40 to 45 minutes.
Let the rolls cool on a wire rack.
Recipe: Potato Bread Rolls
Summary: A basic potato bread recipe made into rolls. You can get the complete Potato Bread III recipe from Allrecipes.
The Footnotes
- About the potatoes: I used a regular russet baking potato, which cooked and mashed nicely. The only thing I’d do differently next time would be to use more potatoes. I used one potato per the recipe instructions, and it barely made one cup when mashed. The recipe said to add water to your potato mash to make 2 cups, so it ended up being more water than potato. The potato flavor was not really that noticeable in the bread.
- About the baking pan: Bread bakes best on a stoneware pan. This recipe makes such a large batch of rolls that they didn’t all fit on my stoneware pan, so I baked the rest of them on a regular metal baking sheet. The ones on the stoneware baked evenly to a nice golden brown. The ones on the metal pan were a bit too brown on the bottom.
Number of servings (yield): 36
Meal type: bread
Additional Resources
To learn more about different types of potatoes for cooking and baking, check out this cool blog All About Potatoes.
Well happy March birthday! These potato rolls look like they came out wonderfully. I was afraid to make bread for years and now I love it.
You are REALLY lucky to get so much rosemary. It seems like I am always hearing about people with these HUGE bushes in their yard but I just don’t happen to have access to one myself!
Thanks so much for the birthday wishes! Figuring out new things to make with rosemary has been fun. I just visited my mother-in-law this weekend, and she didn’t think her rosemary bush made it through the winter. I better enjoy it while I still have some. 🙂