After yesterday’s story on potato beer and potato yeast, I could not resist giving you a couple of recipes for ‘potato beer bread’. The recipes prove yet again that language is a dynamic beast, and show how word searches often turn up completely unexpected results. Yesterday we saw that ‘potato beer’ can mean ‘potato yeast’. Today we find that it can also mean ‘potato cooking water - hence, ‘potato beer bread’ does not contain brewed beer.
The recipes are from Keesling's Book Of Recipes And Household Hints (Logansport, Ind. 1890)
Potato Ball Bread – Mrs. F.M. Harwood – Scald a tablespoonful of flour with a pint of water. Take a pint of fresh mashed potatoes, when cool, add a small potato ball (left from last baking),and one teaspoonful salt, two teaspoonfuls sugar, beat thoroughly. Take out half or three fourths of a cup of this mixture and save it to start bread next time. Mix the remainder of the potatoe with the scalded flour, and let rise overnight; next morning add a pint of tepid water to the yeast or sponge and enough flour to knead well: let rise, work down and rise again before putting in pan, when very light mould into a loaf and a pan of biscuit.
Potato Beer Bread — Mrs. PJ Studebaker — One cup of dried yeast, soak twenty minutes, stir stiff with flour, and let rise; boil four potatoes, scald two spoonfuls of flour with beer from boiled potatoes, mash potatoes and mix with beer and flour. Stir in three quarts of water, then the yeast, let stand overnight; in the morning stir in flour to make thin batter, let rise, then knead stiff with flour, let rise, knead, then rise again, knead out in pans to bake, let rise, then bake in forty-five minutes.
Quotation for the Day.
People who eat potatoes will never be able to perform their abilities in whatever job they choose to have.
Richard Cobden (1804-1865)