makes 1 loaf
The most common rendition of Pane Pugliese is a rustic yeasted white bread typical of the Puglia region of Italy (which you might have guessed from its name). The version I first learned to make used wheat and potato flours and was taught to me by George DePasquale, an Italian-American baker in Seattle. I’ve since developed this version, which incorporates rye for a full-flavored starter. As for the potato flour, I skipped it and went straight to pieces of whole potato. As is so often the case in bread making, changing this one variable completely altered the character of the bread.
The virtue of leaving the potatoes in small chunks is both texture and flavor. And I don’t peel the potatoes, because I like the texture of the skin, which dries out during roasting. In this way, the potato contributes to the final bread in the same way olives or raisins do in other breads, providing little islands of flavor and texture in the larger expanse of crumb. However, the potato’s contribution really starts in during the fermentation stage. The yeast has to work harder and longer to digest the potato, and it creates new and varied flavors as it does so. But strangely, the finished loaf doesn’t taste strongly of potatoes. I think what happens is that the potato starch turns into alcohol, sugars, and a multitude of flavor components as it breaks down and combines with the other ingredients. Just before baking, the finished dough smells sweet and bracing, very much like a wheat beer. One of my regular customers always buys half a loaf at a time, explaining that he’s so addicted to this bread that if he bought whole loaves, he would come back for another one just as frequently, so he’d eat twice as much bread in the same amount of time. My question is, What’s wrong with that?