Yes, as amazing as it sounds, sometimes there are leftover mashed potatoes.
Leftover mashers? I don’t understand.
Okay, the truth is at home I make enough mashers to have a hot lunch to pack for the next day.
But, that aside, there are no leftover mashers here.
But at the restaurant, that was not always the case. Line service is not a place you can run out of mashed potatoes so you make enough. And, almost always, you have leftovers.
Professional kitchens, maybe more than most home kitchens, waste nearly nothing, including mashed potatoes. In a few cases we had to heat up leftover mashers for a busy night’s service.
Chef, whaddayagonnado with all those mashers?
Mashers have a few uses including cream of potato soup and Cottage or Shepherd’s pie, croquettes, or bread.
Potato Bread
An excellent way to utilize leftover-yeah, I know-mashed potatoes. This makes a great sandwich bread or dinner roll.
Ingredients
Ingredients
Poolish
- 7 g instant yeast .25 oz
- 80 g Bread flour 2.8 oz
- 113 g Room temperature water 4 oz
Final dough
- 184 g Leftover mashed potatoes*, room temp 6.5 oz
- 510 g Bread flour 18 oz
- 1.5 t Salt
- 28 g Whole butter, unsalted, room temperature 1 oz
- 170 g Room temperature water 3/4 C
- All Poolish
Instructions
Make the poolish
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Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Stir vigorously until the bread flour shows signs of gluten development.
Store covered overnight at room temperature.
Mix the final dough
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Mix all ingredients on the stand mixer on speed 1, low, for 4 minutes.
Raise the speed to 4, medium, and mix for 4 minutes.
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Dough should form quickly and hold a good shape with supple texture. If it a bit dry, add a bit more water, sneaking it into the bowl while it mixes on speed 1. As the water incorporates, increase the speed until the dough absorbs all the water and is well mixed.
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Ferment in prepared bowl 1 time to double the volume. Remove, scale, shape, pan, and bench till properly risen.
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.Bake 425° for 5 minutes and lower the heat to 375° and bake 30 minutes or until done
Recipe Notes
* Since there is no way to know the water content of the mashed potatoes, it may be the final dough is too wet. Add flour as necessary. This bread recipe has needed more flour at times and the requested portion was too much other times.
This is a very soft bread, well suited for loafs for sandwiches. It also makes very nice dinner rolls. If your dough is stiff enough, it can be a round. Baguette shapes did not work well with this dough.
Hearth, stone or what?
There are so many ways to go at home with added equipment for bread. A pizza stone is, for me, a necessity simply for better pizza. It has the added effect of being a hot surface for breads and keeping the oven more balanced between cycles.
But, as with most things cooking, you can get very specialized toys. I tend to avoid those. A terra cotta baking system with walls and a base might make for superb breads but it renders the oven useless for all else unless you remove it to somewhere else. That’s more than I prefer to do.
A good bread pan is something that will be used a lot. A superior bread pan can, cared for properly, can be handed down. Glass, in my opinion, is never ever the choice for baking ware. Sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving is fine, but never for pie or breads. That’s a me thing.
What I suggest
Below are two items which come in very handy, which I use often, and don’t require extra steps. A bread pan and a pizza stone. I prefer rectangle stone as I leave it in the oven all the time and the items on the stone won’t fall off a curved edge.
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