This crustruns the most striking gamut of colors from dark mahogany to light yellow. There's no doubt the extra sugars in the potato helped this crust color nicely in the oven. While it may look craggy and hard, it's actually quite soft and when toasted, it becomes super svelteand crunchy. Let the potatoes cool until you can handle them, then peel and puree in a blender (or mash them with a potato masher) until smooth and just a few large chunks remain. Let cool until called for during mixing. At 78-82°F (25-27°C) ambient temperature, bulk fermentation should go for about 3 hours. Perform a total of 2 sets of stretch and folds during bulk, spaced out by 30 minutes. Add the called for levain and about half of the reserved water to the mixing bowl. Mix until well combined.

Into the bowl of the large industrial mixer the chain’s development baker Roz Bado tips, by hand, precise pre-measured quantities of a strong white Canadian flour, malt, and the decades-old sourdough “starter” – the crucial “living” ingredients of flour, water and wild yeast which helps a sourdough loaf to rise and gives it more flavour. Split the dough in half down the middle with a bench scraper. Try to be careful not to break any of the bubbles. Towards the end of its life, we recommend transforming the loaf into croutons, stuffing or even a croque monsieur. This is really good but you should try to make sourdough potato bread sometime, it’s delicious.” I’ve probably heard my Dad utter a version of thatfifty times to date, usually just after eating a slice of my fresh sourdough bread.Molnar grew up baking with his grandparents in Florida and studied Ecology at Ivy-League Dartmouth College. He initially wanted to be a fish farmer but ended up working as a trader for agricultural firm Cargill, and later in management consulting. We’re a bit like ageing scientists now, trying to pass the knowledge on to the next generation,” says Molnar. “But bread shouldn’t just be in the hands of great chefs, it should be more widely available for people. I’ve always believed that.” I love how eating good food tugs at an invisible, interconnected web of food-memories we’ve constructed over the course of our lifetimes. This complex web, with scattered connections between foods, smells, experiences, and memories, is gradually filled in and ever-evolving: it shapes the corpus of foods we enjoy, giving them significance in place and time. Perhaps the construction of this web is instilled at a primal level, maybe it’s a way we’ve evolutionarily progressed to favor foods that provide proper nourishment by exciting our senses, pushing out hollow foods that provide nothing or are uninteresting. I believe it’s one of the many reasons we’ve stayed alive for so long, eating the things we need instead of those we don’t. am:Feed sourdough starter with flour and water. Depending on how active your sourdough starter is, it could take between 4-12 hours for it to be active enough to bake a loaf of bread. Fresh rosemary– All you need is a little bit to really add so much delicious flavor. Can also substitute with dried rosemary. Tools you may need to make this recipe:

Potato and rosemary are a classic pairing but you could substitute the rosemary for another spice such as thyme (which is what I tried for my first few attempts seen below), or omit it entirely for a cleaner, more potato forward flavor. Speaking of rosemary, I find not all rosemary plants produce the samelevel of potency in their leaves. Some plants, like mine, are quite pungent and strong while others are simply not. Start with the recommended 1% rosemary and scale up/down to suit your taste after youtry thefirst bake. As with my previous polenta sourdough with rosemary, I like to keep the spice light so it doesn’t obscurethe other flavors throughout. But this web might not be as invisible and hidden as it might first seem. We see evidence of the intermingled connections each time we sit down to eat: “this cake reminds me of that one you made 2 years ago when…,” or “this salad reminds me of that time we were traveling through Italy and stopped in at…” In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say just about every meal I eat with my family we talk about other meals eaten, or other dishes enjoyed in the past — and it's through that traversal of the food-memory web where we are instantly, and clearly, transported to a significant time and place in our otherwise blurred history.

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This almost paternal feeling is shared by many of the long-serving bakers. “Our head baker treats the doughs like his babies, when he’s on holiday he calls and asks how they’re doing.” Transfer to floured banneton or a bowl lined with a tea towel (I like to use rice flour). Another option is an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic and proof for 12-15 hours in the refrigerator. In a large mixing bowl, combine warm water, flour, sourdough starter, and salt with your hands, a wooden spoon, or dough whisk. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes for the water to hydrate the flour.This process is called autolyse, which allows all the flours to become hydrated. Selling bread from a 30-year-old source is a potential food standards nightmare, and measures are in place to ensure a whole day’s batch can be pulled if anything goes wrong. “We had a big issue trying to explain to food safety how this culture has been alive for so long, but we didn’t want them to stop craft bakers making something that’s safe.” Once the oven is preheated, roast the potatoes on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to 1 hour, rotating and flipping them halfway. Test the potatoes at 45 minutes to see if they are done by inserting a knife into the center. The knife should slide easily and not encounter any tough spots.

The most accurate way to get the best loaves of bread each time is to measure your ingredients with a kitchen scale. Bake the loaves at 450°F (232°C) for 20 minutes with steam, then remove the steaming pans from inside the oven. Then, bake for an additional 30-35 minutes or until done. On Thursday the first 100 loaves of”waste bread” – baked in the early hours – will go on sale in 10 selected branches of Gail’s Bakery, before being rolled out across the rest of its 43-strong chain in London and the south-east. Roughly one-third of each baked 750g loaf consists of leftover bread and the chain calculates that the 100 loaves being baked daily will save approximately 10kg of bread being wasted per day. Shape into a ball by gently spinning it toward you in a circular motion. This tension really helps give it that oven spring and rise.To shape as a batard: flip the resting round over onto the floured surface and fold the top half up and over to the middle and the bottom half up and over the recently folded top. You’ll have a long horizontal rectangle sitting in front of you. Turn the rectangle 90º and grab a small portion of the top, pull up and fold over a little bit, pressing down to seal. Take the rolled top and continue to gently roll it down toward your body with two hands working together. As you do each roll and work your way down the vertical rectangle, use your thumbs to gently press the dough into itself. Imbued with umami herbs and seeds, the GAIL’s Potato & Rosemary Sourdough can be topped with torn mozzarella and roast vegetables, or simply served alongside soup.