Daring Bakers November: One cannot live on bread alone

It's that time of month again, where the food blogging world is alive with posts all making the same recipe. This month the hens went on strike, and the cows needed some time off, so no mountains of eggs, and no vat loads of heavy cream were used in the creation of what might end up being 400 loaves of Tender Potato Bread, all courtesy of the Daring Bakers! That's right, the Daring Bakers have grown to the 400 number, and while not everyone did this month's challenge recipe, I am sure I am not the only person who made more than one batch of it.

We owe this months' recipe to Tanna, our hostess for the month of November. She challenged us to follow the recipe exactly, to a certain point, and then let loose the Daring Baker in us and see what we could come up with.

What I came up with was one very huge loaf of bread. And I do mean HUGE!

My bread baking experience started with a question - how many ounces in a pound? It's 16, btw, in case you didn't know. So for me, 1 1/2 potatoes was enough to get me between the 8 and 16 ounce guideline given to us for the quantity of potato needed for the recipe. I am so glad that weight was given, because if I had followed the 4 medium potatoes, I'd have had over 3 pounds of potato in my bread! And that would have been way too much!

Yes, this dough was a bit sticky, but other than that, it was nice to work with. It rose nicely, it baked up quickly and with a good crust, and it tasted mighty fine, warm, slathered with butter.

I wish I could say I enjoyed it the next day, but I didn't. I guess I am an eat bread warm from the oven kind of girl. Oh well.

Seeing as this was my challenge recipe, I did have to make it more than once. (Okay, maybe have to is a bit strong - I wanted to.) So last week I pulled out my potatoes and got working on a second batch of the bread, making a very large Focaccia instead of a loaf, studded with lots of scallions, and topped with fleur de sel and freshly ground black pepper, which I served with a homemade cauliflower soup. (Sorry, all my pictures for that one turned out blurry and boring, so no pictures!) Fingers of the focaccia were perfect for sopping up the soup.

I'm not sure if I will make this bread again, it will go into the "Maybe" tab of my Daring Bakers' recipe binder. While we enjoyed the flavor of it warm, after the first day no one in my house ate it. The children, who had inhaled it the first night, each took a bite the next day then turned up their noses and asked for something else. Feed back from my test guinea pigs (friends) was favorable, even for the next day, unless I am making it for a large crowd, I can see alot of bread going to waste.

Many thanks to Tanna for this month's recipe, not something I would have thought to try on my own. Be sure to check out as many of the other Daring Baker's blogs as you can, before you get sick of bread!