Potato Chive Bread

I greatly overestimated the amount of mashed potatoes I needed for thanksgiving. With a ton of leftovers and a desire not to each the same meal for a week, I set out to transform them into something delicious. I made a pot of creamy potato soup and a few loaves of this beautiful potato chive bread. The bread came out fluffy and soft with lots of bright chive flavor.

This bread is pretty simple to make. To make it even easier, I melted the butter in the microwave with the milk before mixing it with the yeast and sugar. I also mixed everything with a whisk until the addition of flour. The dough hook doesn’t work as well to incorporate the potatoes.

Like I said in the beginning, I used leftover mashed potatoes for this bread. They were made with a generous amount of cream and butter but were solid out of the fridge. There is not a lot of potatoes in this recipe, but their constituency and fluidity may affect the dough. Keep some extra flour on hand when mixing just in case. The dough is sticky and hard to get out of the bowl. It should clear the sides of the bowl and ball up on the hook. If the dough looks like a puddle, add a little more flour.

I divided the dough into six pieces and formed little logs to get the bubble top on this loaf. I like the character of an uneven looking loaf. If you would like a uniform loaf, use a scale to divide the dough into equal pieces. Form the pieces into a log shape. To do this, gently flatten each piece, bring the top toward the middle, and press, continue folding to form a log. Place the logs into a loaf pan, touching one another. Forming a bubble top for this loaf isn’t necessary and can be skipped. It’s purely decorative.

I added fresh chives to this bread because I like chives with potatoes. The bread is also pretty tasty plain, or you can try it with some roasted garlic or rosemary.