On the Far Side of the World

My ancestors lived in Ireland, the misty green land. One of the staples of the diet is the potato and the Irish have ever loved their tatties. On the far side of the world from Ireland is New Zealand. The natives there, the Maori, also enjoy potatoes. The Bread Baking Babes' kitchen of the month is Lien's blog Nottie van Lien and she gave us a wonderful Maori bread recipe that uses a cooked potato and some water as the ingredients for a starter, so this bread has fermented potato as it's sourdough starter. She included a beautiful New Zealand fern stencil, but I wasn't able to use that, so look for it on the other Babes' sites.

The first time I tried to make the starter I somehow introduced something that spoiled the starter. It smelled really bad and had reddish (dark pink actually) splotches through the starter. I actually made the dough with it but that smelled bad, too, and the bad smell overpowered the fresh rosemary fragrance which is hard to do! On the advice of some of my fellow Babes I threw the whole thing out...probably saving myself from unpleasant stomach cramps or worse...and started over again. This is one of the reasons that I treasure being part of such a warm and responsive baking group.

For the next starter I was super careful. I made sure that everything I used was glass, ceramic or stainless steel and I made sure to wash everything in very hot water as I went along. I also put the glass bowl with the starter in it into a soft sided insulated bag...and idea I got while reading some of the Forging Fromage blogs which I linked to through Natashya's blog Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. If it works for fermenting fromage, why not sourdough starter? That kept the temperature even and kept the starter warm enough.

Success! the starter was lovely and the bread made with it is delicious! It has the distinctive flavor that bread with potato in it has and the lovely tenderness of crumb, too.

The fresh rosemary goes wonderfully with the potato flavor. All in all a lovely loaf! I couldn't find my Xacto knife for a stencil, so I used a paring knife and made a fairly crude star stencil, but it does add some pizzazz to the look of the loaf.

Thank you Lien for providing such a great recipe. I hope that lots of my dear readers will consider trying this recipe...and that they have initial success with the starter, too. If it smells really, really sour, like sour milk only more so, don't use it, OK?

To be a buddy all you need to do is find the recipe at Lien's blog...the link is HERE, then bake the bread and send her an e-mail with the link to your post and do it by the 29th of March. Do check out the great breads made this month by the other Bread Baking Babes...the links are in the sidebar at top right.

So what stencil are YOU going to use?

Sending this over to Susan at Wild Yeast for the weekly Yeastspotting event...a true breadhead's delight...check it out by clicking HERE.