A Handsome Braided Roasted Garlic and Herb Potato Bread

This bread packs so much flavor in each bite - it's got mashed potatoes incorporated into the dough, along with roasted garlic and fresh rosemary, chives, basil, and oregano.

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Here's a haiku that I think captures the essence of this loaf of bread:

Mashed potatoes, herbs
Roasted garlic in one loaf
Braided perfection

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It's great for toast, sandwiches, or dunking in soup. Really there is so much flavor in this bread that it's more than just a vehicle for other things.

I adapted Peter Reinhart's recipe for potato bread, using all purpose flour in place of bread flour, doubling the amount of mashed potatoes, increasing the amount of garlic and herbs, and leaving out the black pepper. I also increased the recipe by 50%, making 1.5 times the amount of bread that is called for in the recipe (it's a big loaf).

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The bread starts with biga which is a mixture of flour, water, and yeast that is refgerated overnight and cut into pieces before being added to the bulk of the flour, water, yeast, mashed potatoes, salt, and herbs for the loaf.

Once the dough is formed, it rises until doubled in size, for about 2 hours.

Then, instead of making standard loaves, I opted to make one large braided loaf.

The entire braided loaf needed to proof (second rise) on the counter for about an hour.

Then, into the oven at 400°F for about 1 hour, and it was ready to go!

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This beauty queen looks so nice in monochrome.

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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please do check out my blog.

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All content and images by @jaymorebeet, taken on August 23, 2017 with a Canon 7D Mark II.