After making Peter Reinhart’s Potato Rosemary Bread, I still had leftover mashed potatoes and potato water.

Thankfully, Peter Reinhart has more than one recipe that uses these ingredients.

For the Potato Onion Rye Meteil, you will need:

For the soaker:

142g whole rye flour

4g salt

170g potato water

1. Mix up the ingredients and let sit for 4-6 hours.

For the starter:

71g active starter

213g combination of whole wheat flour and rye flour

170g of water or potato water

1. mix up the ingredients, cover and let rise for 4-6 hours.

When it’s time to make your final dough, you will need:

Your starter and soaker

128g combination of whole wheat and rye flours

10g salt

9g instant or active dry yeast

227g cooked potato.  I mashed it up finely with a fork so there were no big chunks.

113g fresh onion, diced

14g honey

extra rye or whole wheat flour

Mix all the ingredients together, kneading well so it is entirely incorporated.  Place it in a bowl, covered, to rise for 1.5 hours.

Punch down the dough gently, then divide into two loaves.  Let rest on the counter for 15 minutes.

Shape the dough into round boules, then place them seam-side up in prepared bannetons.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F with your dutch oven inside.

When the oven is ready, turn out your dough into your dutch oven so the seam is now on the bottom.  Score your dough, then bake for 20 minutes with the lid on.  Remove the lid, bump the temperature down to 350 degrees, and continue baking another 20-30 minutes until the loaf is a rich brown.

These loaves, though small, are packed with flavor.  It’s funny; the taste reminds me of wild rice.  Maybe I will add some next time.

I had originally planned to write a post on The Science Behind… starch using this post, but there are too many confounding variables to be able to tell the difference made by the potato water and mashed potatoes.   I may try adding potato water and mashed potato to a 2-3 bread, and make another regular loaf without them, to show the difference.

Have you ever experimented with rye flour?  So far as long as I stick with Peter Reinhart’s recipes I’ve been having success.