A treatise on the art of making good wholesome bread of wheat, oats, rye, barley and other farinaceous grains / Exhibiting the alimentary properties and chemical constitution of different kinds of bread corn, and of the various substitutes used for bread, in different parts of the world

by Friedrich Christian Accum

Potatoe Bread.

Potatoes, mixed in various quantities, with flour, make a wholesome, nutritive, and pleasant bread. Various methods are employed for preparing the potatoes.

1. Pare a peck of potatoes, put them into a proper quantity of water, and boil them till they are reduced to a pulp, then beat them up into a smooth mass with the water they boiled in, and knead the mass, with two pecks of wheaten flour, with a sufficient quantity of yeast and salt, into a dough; cover it up, and allow it to ferment like common wheaten bread, then make it up into loaves and bake them. Another method is the following:

2. Take twelve pounds of the most mealy sort of peeled potatoes, boil and press them through a fine wire sieve, in such a manner as to reduce the roots, as nearly as possible, to a state of dry flour. Mix it up with twenty pounds of wheaten flour; and of this mixture make, and set the dough in the same manner as if the whole were wheaten flour. See page [97].

3. Take three pounds of potatoes, boil, skin, and mash them, and whilst warm, bruise them with a spoon, and put them into a dish before the fire, to let the moisture evaporate, stirring them frequently, that no part grows hard; when dry, rub them as fine as possible and add nine pounds of wheaten flour, and with a sufficient quantity of yeast and salt, knead it up as other dough; lay it a little while before the fire to ferment, and then divide it into loaves and bake them in a very hot oven. Another method is the following:

4. Boil and peel the potatoes as for eating, reduce them without any water to a fine meal or stiff paste. Add to two parts by weight of the paste, one part of potatoe starch, and half a part of wheaten flour, and having added to it salt and yeast, suffer it to ferment; mould the dough into loaves, and bake them in the usual manner.

M. Parmentier found, from a variety of experiments, that good bread might be made from a mixture of raw potatoe-pulp and wheaten meal, with the addition of yeast and salt; and Dr. Darwin asserts, that if eight pounds of good raw potatoes be grated into cold water, and after stirring the mixture the starch be left to subside, and when collected, mixed with eight pounds of boiled potatoes, the mass will make as good bread as that from the best wheaten flour.