This homemade potato bread recipe makes a pillowy soft loaf that’s perfect for slicing. It stays soft and fresh for days; make a loaf or two over the weekend and you’ll have fresh sandwich bread all week.
Related: DIY French Bread Loaf
Homemade bread is a wonderful place to start in moving away from consumption and towards production. In preparing this staple at home you can control ingredients, avoid plastic packaging, and enjoy that incredible aroma that will permeate your home. Whether you want a sandwich loaf or a dinner roll to go with your soup, homemade bread has no store-bought equivalent.
What we want in a homemade bread is something wholesome and delicious; frugal and sustainable. And if ever there were a soft, pillowy, high-rising bread that is nearly foolproof, it is the potato bread recipe. Adding this seemingly mundane root vegetable lends a starchy wholesome element to this loaf that gives it a softness lasting for days.
Related: Grandma’s Portuguese Sweet Bread
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Homemade Potato Bread Recipe
Potatoes are fairly easy to grow and if like us you plant hundreds of them, you can use them up in breads such as this. While leftover mashed potatoes can be used here, a plain freshly cooked potato is your best bet for purity of flavor.
Unenriched by oils, eggs, or milk, this is a frugal staple for a homesteader. Add a potato to the basic flour, water, sugar, yeast formula and you’ve got a potato bread recipe that just might become your favorite homemade bread. (Though you should try all of these bread recipes to be sure!)
Toast this bread for breakfast, make soft sandwiches, or butter it up alongside a hearty stew. Whatever way you serve it, you’ll appreciate its soft crumb and wholesome flavor.
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Homemade Potato Bread Recipe
This homemade potato bread recipe makes a pillowy soft loaf that's perfect for slicing. It stays soft and fresh for days; make a loaf or two over the weekend and you'll have fresh sandwich bread all week.
Ingredients
- 1 medium starchy potato
- 1/2 cup reserved potato water
- 3/4 cup warm water
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
- 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 3.5 cups bread flour, plus more for kneading
Instructions
- Peel and chop potato and place in a small saucepan. Cover with water and boil potato until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool until warm before proceeding with recipe.
- Once potato is cooled down, remove it from the pan of boiling water and mash, reserving cooking water. Mash potatoes until smooth and then measure one cup of that mash.
- Place in a large mixing bowl along with 1/2 cup of the reserved potato water, sugar, and 3/4 cup warm water. Mix together until uniform and then sprinkle on the active dry yeast. Stir to combine and allow to proof for 5-10 minutes or until bubbles begin to form.
- Stir in the salt and then the flour, starting with three cups. Stir with a wooden or metal spoon until the dough comes together into a shaggy mass, as in the photo. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead for 5-10 minutes, adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking, until the dough is soft and the gluten developed.
- Place back in the mixing bowl and cover. Allow to rise for about 1-1.25 hours, until doubled in volume.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9x5" bread pan and punch down the dough. Flatten the dough on a lightly floured work surface, creating a rectangle. Fold the dough onto itself like an envelope to create a loaf shape.
- Gently move the dough to the prepared bread pan and dust with flour. Cover with a towel and leave to rise an additional 30-35 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Transfer bread to the oven and bake for approximately 40-45 minutes or until golden brown. You can find out if the bread is fully baked by turning it out of its pan and thumping the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds hollow, it is done.
- Transfer the bread to a cooling rack and leave to cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing.
Notes
If you have leftover baked or boiled potatoes, you may use those in place of the freshly boiled potato.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 16 Serving Size: 1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 117Unsaturated Fat: 0gSodium: 294mgCarbohydrates: 23gFiber: 1gSugar: 1gProtein: 4g
Aloha! I’m Kris Bordessa, 
Excellent texture, crust ,and taste! Thank you
Could I use Rye flour instead of bread flour?
I haven’t tried this. If you do, let us know how it turns out!
Can this be made using a bread machine?
I haven’t tried this to say!
Would this make a good hamburger bun? Any idea how long to bake?
I haven’t tried it — if you do, let us know!
Can this be made using gluten free all purpose flour mix?
It will not result in a comparable loaf. Gluten free yeast breads are hard to get right!
Very good and easy recipe. I love that it makes one loaf. I had leftover mashed potatoes, so I bagged and froze them along with the potato water to make two more future loaves. Will probably be making this bread at least once a week.
Potato bread is my favorite bread to make. I’m surprised there is no fat.
Thank you so much for this recipe. The bread tastes delicious and is very fluffy as promised. Will make this one again.
I’ve used mashed potato flakes for this purpose, too.
We are low on flour and yeast and not able to get to the shops as in lockdown for corona virus. Even with 6 cups of flour this is still a sticky mess – even stuck to a silicone sheet which is impressive. A waste of time and a waste of ingredients.
I’m so sorry to hear that you had trouble with this recipe. 🙁
It came out beautifully – our new favourite bread. The dough is pretty sticky but if you just ignore that and put enough flour on your hands/board that you can shape it and plonk it in the loaf tin it turns out wonderfully
I made this recipe in a double batch to get 2 loaves. I used 7 cups of flour and very generously floured my board for kneading, because of the stickiness. If you take the time to get all the dough off your spoons and fingers, i promise you will be happy with the results.
Am I missing it. Where do you add the mashed potatoe?
Steps 2 & 3.
Could I substitute almond flour? I’m trying to find a good bread recipe that’s not filled with gluten and weed killer but I don’t like any of the Paleo or keto recipes. I thought I’d give potato bread a try.
I’m gluten free as well, so I know that you can’t just sub almond flour. It won’t work. I need to get some of my GF recipes up on the site!
Maybe I am missing it, but I do not see when to add the 3/4 cup warm water and the sugar.
Thanks so much for alerting me to this. Sometimes things get lost when I insert them into the recipe card form! It’s been fixed.