Potato Sandwich Loaf

"Sandwich loaves" are that white soft type of bread (formfranska in Swedish) you normally get in plastic bags at the supermarket. I had no idea that you could make them at home, but apparently, you can! Beranbaums book has 9 different recipes for sandwich loaves. First there is the the basic white plain one, then there are variations made with i.e. cheddar, banana, potatoes, flaxseed, sweet potato and more.

I went for the potato bread as I had some leftover potatoes on hand. The dough was made with wheat, yeast milk and of course, mashed potatoes.

Most breads in the book are made by the "sponge process". That means that half the dough (but all liquid ingredients) are mixed first, this is the sponge  The rest (only dry ingredients) are mixed separately and sprinkled on top of the sponge. The "topping" is called the flour mixture. Then everything gets to rest somewhere between 1 and 24 hours to ferment, this gives more depth in flavour. I'm sure it's not necessary to top the sponge with the flour mixture, the author says that it protects the sponge but you can probably do that with a film of plastic wrap as well. But on the other hand, I found it good to measure up all ingredients at once, so if you notice that there just isn't enough flour at the end, you can go to the store and get more before it is time to mix all the ingredients together.

The dough was very stiff at first, more like pie dough, but after processing it for 10 minutes or so it resembled a more "normal" yeast dough.

And, here is the result:

This bread is very soft and spongy at the same time. I imagine if you sat down on a loaf and then stood up it would just sprooooing back to it's original shape. Not that I tried though, but I have to admit that is would be an interesting experiment  :)