DAY 1

Step 1: How To Cook Potatoes For Sourdough Potato Bread?

• Here are two easy ways to prep them. Both work equally well, but note that boiled potatoes will have a tad more moisture (negligible if you ask me), so you may need to lower the water amount by 5-10ml in your dough.
• Baked Potatoes – Pop whole potatoes (skin on) into a hot oven and bake until they’re very soft—this usually takes about an hour at 200°C. Once cooled slightly, scoop out the flesh, mash until smooth, and let it cool to room temperature. This method gives the potatoes a slightly richer flavour.
• Boiled Potatoes – Place whole potatoes (skin on) into a pot of cold water, bring to a boil, and cook for 30-40 minutes, depending on size. Once they’re cool enough to handle, peel off the skin, mash well, and let them cool before adding to your dough.

Step 2: Sourdough Starter

• As with typical sourdough recipes, this Sourdough Potato bread relies on the wild yeast for its rise. Make sure your sourodugh starter is not overly acidic and is fed regularly. Once you feed it one last time, leave it in a warm spot to at least double (if not triple) in volume for 4 hours, and make sure to use it before it starts deflating.

Step 3: Mixing The Dough

• When your sourdough starter is active and bubbly, in a bowl of your stand mixer, mix the dry ingredients: flour and salt.
• Add the mashed potato, active sourdough starter and water.
• Run the mixer for approximately 10 minutes on medium speed, until the bread dough looks elastic and slightly shiny. It does not need to pass the windowpane test, but it should be gathering around the dough hook and look relatively smooth.

Step 4: Coil Folds and Bulk Fermentation

• Scoop the dough into a large clean bowl. Cover with a damp te towel or cling film (plastic wrap) and let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
• For the next 2 hours, at 30-minute intervals, coil fold your dough (see video below), or you can perform sets of stretch and folds if that’s what you’re used to.
• After 4 sets of folds, leave the potato sourdough undisturbed in a warm spot for 2-3 hours, until almost doubled in size.

Step 5: Shaping and Cold Retardation

• At the end of bulk fermentation, using a dough scraper, scoop the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Try and make sure that the smooth top of the dough (the side that is not intact with the bowl) is placed on the floured work surface. Then swiftly fold the four corners of the dough into the centre and flip the dough over.
• With your bench scraper held at a shallow angle to the work surface, push the dough while using your hand to tuck it under itself, creating tension. This fluid circular motion involves pushing and gently rounding with the bench knife, while your free hand continues the rounding motion, tucking the dough slightly under itself. It takes some practice, but you should aim for a tight round shape of the dough that holds its shape and doesn’t spread much (we prefer a round loaf, but you can easily shape it into a batard too).
• Place the dough ball into a well-floured banneton basket. The smooth side of the sourdough ball should be at the bottom, with the seam at the top.
• Pinch the seam together with your fingers, if the dough starts spreading in the bowl to make sure the dough is tight. Sprinkle with some flour, and cover the dough with a clean fabric napkin or small clean tea towel.
• Place the proofing basket in a large plastic bag – it will protect the dough from drying out. Then place the whole thing in the fridge for its final rise (a.k.a. second rise) in the fridge for 12-36 hours.
• If you wish, you can bake sourdough in a loaf pan! Head to our article about baking sourdough in a loaf pan to learn more!

Day 2

Step 6: Preheating The Dutch Oven

• The next day, place the Dutch Oven in the oven, and preheat it to 240°C (typically, it is the highest temperature home ovens will go to) with the Dutch oven in it. It needs to be piping hot!

Step 7: Scoring and Baking

• Once the oven is hot, take the dough out of the fridge and out of the bag.
• Invert the dough gently onto a large piece of parchment paper. If your dough was properly bulk fermented and shaped correctly, it should not spread once inverted.
• Dust the surface of the dough with a little flour. Using a bread lame or a razor blade, score the dough deeply (approximately 1cm deep) at a 30- 45º angle.
• Take the hot Dutch Oven out of the oven, take the lid off, and lift the sourdough into it, holding the edges of the parchment paper.
• Place the lid back on the Dutch Oven and place the bread into the hot oven for 25 minutes.
• Or try baking sourdough in an inverted Dutch Oven.
• After 25 minutes, take the lid off, and return the sourdough to the oven for another 25 minutes. If you don’t want your loaf of bread to be too dark in colour, you can reduce the oven temperature to 200°C.

Step 8: Cooling

• Once baked, take the Dutch Oven out of the oven. The top of the sourdough should be golden brown and it should sound hollow when tapped on the base. Lift the bread out by holding the corners of the parchment paper. Place the bread onto the wire rack, and slide the parchment paper from underneath the loaf.
• Leave the sourdough loaf to cool down to room temperature before slicing with a sharp knife.