Karen’s Vegan Kitchen: Sourdough Bread with Kamut Flour and Baked Potato made with a little help from your bread machine

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Sourdough Bread with Kamut Flour and Baked Potato made with a little help from your bread machine

Another version of delicious sourdough potato bread.

I try to bake a loaf of sourdough bread every couple weeks and I have been refining a recipe for Sourdough Potato Bread. I have literally made a variation of it eight times already. It's rarely perfect and that's what I love about homemade bread – it's usually edible even when the recipe doesn't come out as expected. I'm always switching out the flours, mixing process, baking times, etc. No wonder the results are never the same!

The inspirational recipe is from "How to Make Bread" by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou and I really don't get his methodology. He mixes it up, lets it sit for 10 minutes, hand kneads it in the bowl for 10 seconds, and he does this four times before letting it rise for an hour. The dough is kind of wet and I find the whole process "difficult." So I just do it "my" way. And that's with as little hands-on time as possible!

This time around I decided to use my bread machine for the initial mixing and rise. I also wanted to use some kamut flour. I was very pleased with the results. I like the mild taste of the kamut flour and I found my sourdough rising more robustly after the initial rise in the bread machine. Next time I am going to increase the amount of kamut flour to half instead of just a third of the flour total. I'm also going to use my new assistant again – the bread machine!

I like to slice and freeze it after a couple of days. It makes awesome toast!

Warning: If you don't have much experience make bread from scratch this probably isn't the best loaf to start on. My directions could be more detailed, but really, I'm kind of winging it myself!

Note on measurements: I use ounces, cups and grams. Successful bakers weigh their ingredients and I try to use grams for my flours. Liquids and salt are just easier using cups and teaspoons. What I really need to do is learn to use baker's percentages... Makes 1 loaf.

Sourdough Bread with Kamut Flour and Baked Potato

Ingredients
1 medium potato, scrubbed and baked (about 5 oz. after baking)
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250 g active sourdough starter
2/3 cup warm water
2 tsp olive oil
10 g vital wheat gluten
200 g all purpose bread flour (organic, unbleached, unbromated)
100 g kamut flour
1 tsp salt
5 oz baked potato including the skin, crumbled

Directions
Select dough setting on bread machine. Add all the ingredients in the order listed. Turn bread machine on and let it do its thing. Be sure to take a look and make sure dough doesn't look too wet or too dry. You do want this dough to be a bit sticky.

After finishing first rise in bread machine, scrape from bowl onto lightly floured surface. Let sit for 10-15 minutes and then gently pull into rectangle, folding into thirds, rotate and again fold into thirds. Form into ball and put in lightly oiled bowl and cover and let rise until doubled.

Gently move from bowl onto lightly floured surface and gently pull into rectangle folding into thirds, rotate and again fold into thirds. Form into ball and place smooth size down into brotform bowl.

When it's almost double in size, preheat oven to 425 degrees. I like to bake in a clay pot so I put that in the oven at this time. When dough is doubled gently invert onto parchment paper, slash the top, and place in the preheated clay pot. Bake for 30 minutes, remove lid and bake for about 15-20 more minutes until done. You can test with thermometer gauge reading of 190-200 degrees or tap on the bottom, it should sound hollow.