Fran’s Recipes: Potato Bread

Chef Fran’s recipes from the Portuguese Country Cooking School.

Once back at the farmhouse from our market excursion, I was in real knead of some bread so the adventure began.

600g plain flour
25g Live yeast (crumble into some water then set aside to let the magic work)

1/2 tsp Sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
2 mashed Potatoes
Fresh herbs (rosemary)
Sliced onion

Start working the ingredients together. This is the sticky part of the process. Once you have got your dough, take out all your frustrations on it for 10 minutes and work it baby work it! Put in a bowl, cover and leave aside for half an hour. On the day, the bread was actually the first thing we started with as it needs time to let nature take its course with the yeast. You will need to knead and literally beat it as you out your back into it several times between “rising rests”. We allowed to rest whilst we focused on the other dishes.

Place into a greased backing dish. Sprinkle with the rosemary, sea salt, olive oil and finely sliced onions. Finally the dough has almost doubled in size. We baked in the wood fired oven once it had cooled down enough to what… Gas mark 4?

No idea, but it needed to cool a bit so as to avoid totally charring the bread.

The result. Just lovely!