When I went to live with Grandpa in 1974, about a year before he died, he said,
"Girl, I've been cooking for many years, now you can do the cooking."
"Oh Grandpa, I don't know how to cook."
"Well, then, I'll have to teach you!"
And that he did. We made soup, pot pies, fried chicken, and French fries, corn meal mush, crab cakes and more.
One day he decided to bake potato bread, with the recipe handed down through his mother's family. As he was showing me how to do it, he commented on how none of his children had learned the recipe, and how he was glad to pass it along. I think I shared that conversation with Uncles Pete and Paul, who were then very happy to learn.
So here's the recipe for all of you:
3 medium potatoes
3 level Tbs sugar
2 generous Tbs salt
1 stick margarine
4 cups potato water
About 6 cups flour
1 cup warm water
3 packages yeast
five round aluminum baking tins oven set at 350 degrees
recipe makes 4 or 5 loaves
Pour water into a large kettle. Peel and cut up the potatoes and cook them in the water until they are very soft. Remove potatoes from the water into a bowl and mash them as fine as you can, then return them to the water. Add the sugar, salt and margarine.
In a cup mix the yeast and warm (110-115 degrees) water until it begins to foam. Set aside. Then begin to add and mix the flour a bit at a time to the potato water. At first it will appear lumpy, but as you add more flour, it will smooth out. When you've added about half the flour, pour in the yeast mixture.
Continue adding flour, eventually using your hand to combine. When all the flour is in, scrape the very sticky dough out onto a surface that has lots of flour on it. This begins the kneading process.
Grandpa would have a mound of flour just above the bump of dough he was working. He would bring his hand around the side and catch some of the flour from the mound and push it into the dough. Round and round he'd go for about 10 minutes, pushing and stretching until the dough was no longer sticky. He would say, "When you think you have enough flour added in, work in a little bit more." Finally he had a smooth ball. He would press it with his finger, and the dent would lift out to form a smooth surface.
Next Grandpa would return the dough to the kettle, cover it with a light tea towel and let it rise until about doubled in size.
He had round aluminum tins that could hold about a quart. He melted margarine and brushed it on the inside of the pans.
When the dough had risen, he would push it down, dump it back out onto the floured surface and knead it a little. He would squeeze off a lump of dough, form it into a ball and put it into a buttered pan. Then he repeated with the remainder of the dough. He covered the pans and let the dough balls rise until they formed nice round domes above the pans.
In a 350-degree oven, he would bake the loaves for an hour, then open the oven, brush butter on the tops, and return to the oven for five minutes more. When they were done, he'd remove each from its pan, tap on the bottom to hear a drum-like sound (his test for doneness), and place on a rack to cool.
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