Potato Buttermilk Bread

April 5, 2006
This morning I took the some flaxseed bread out of the freezer for my morning toast, and realized it was the last piece of homemade bread in the house. I would either have to bake a loaf of bread today or have a piece of toast made from storebought bread tomorrow. An easy decision.
I just got the little bag of flour that I ordered from The Baker's Catalogue and still had some leftover buttermilk in the house, so I whipped up the biga for potato buttermilk bread. I left a note for Chelsea, the wonderful woman who cleans my house, asking her to put the biga in the refrigerator. Then I mixed up the dough when I got home from work, let it rise, shaped it, and went off to yoga, with instructions to Jim to preheat the oven at 7:30.
I tempted my friend Karen to come home with me after yoga with the promise of freshly baked bread (although she looked at me like I was a crazy woman when I dumped the ice cubes in the oven). Karen has a gluten intolerance, but was willing to eat the bread just to get a mention in the blog.
This bread, which took a village to make, is excellent. The potato/buttermilk combination makes it moist, tender, and very flavorful. The variation with dill sounds tempting--but I still have 62 more varieties of bread to bake, so there will be no variations until I've baked all 83.
My French slashing knife has not yet arrived, so I've again done an inferior job of slashing, Rose says the single-edged razor blade works best, but I won't resort to that until I try the French slasher.