I started to think that joining the Daring Bakers during high baking season wasn’t a good idea after all. You know, that whole spit-into-the-wind, tug-on-Superman’s-cape thing. Then the announcement came. Bread? Could the Baking Gods be that pleased?
::Bowing reverently towards my oven::
My first challenge as a new member of the Daring Bakers would be bread. Homemade bread. Just in time for Thanksgiving. Tanna, dear – you are a genius 🙂
My Kitchen in Half Cups is hosting this month’s Daring Baker Challenge: Tender Potato Bread. It was very difficult not to run into the kitchen and bake the potato bread on the day the recipe was announced to the group. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that difficult – I didn’t have any potatoes. But still, I held off ’til the Tuesday before Thanksgiving so I could kill two loaves with one stone.
We had free reign over the flavoring of the bread (as long as it was savory) and the shape of the bread. Since there seems to be an unwritten rule that all breads served at Thanksgiving must be round, I opted to make rolls. Everything else was to be done by the book and by hand. This meant I wasn’t allowed to sit at the island and do my Christmas shopping online while my KitchenAid did all the work – I had to get my hands dirty. An odd admission by someone who loves to cook and bake: I hate to get my hands dirty. We were warned that the dough would be sticky – that was an understatement!
A pictorial in making Tender Potato Bread rolls, using my fancy-schmancy new camera:
I flavored half of the batch with a generous mound of fresh cracked pepper and Pecorino-Romano and left the other half “plain.” I let the dough complete two rises and then I wrapped the rolls with lightly-oiled plastic wrap and popped the trays into the freezer. Two hours before I was ready to bake the rolls, I pulled them out of the freezer and let them sit on the counter. After a quick brush with some melted butter (another Thanksgiving requirement), the rolls went into the oven ’til golden brown. The recipe yielded nice, moist and tender rolls.
For the recipe, visit My Kitchen in Half Cups. And don’t forget to check out the other Daring Bakers’ version of Tender Potato Bread!