potato flour

potato bread is the next item on the bread making list and, since we are trying to get a feel for the actual amount of work that goes into the process, i wanted to make my own flour...i grow potatoes every year...in fact there are a number of them down in the plant room under the lights right now...so i have a fair idea of what is involved in that...potato flour is new to me however...

so i peeled about a pound and a half of red potatoes...

cut them into fairly uniform chunks...

cooked and mashed them into what would pass as lumpy...

spread them out on dehydrator trays, plugged it in, and left them for about six hours...

after which they were pretty much hard, brittle lumps of starch...

i put them in the grain mill and set the timer for three minutes...

there were still some pieces that were apparently too hard for even the mill to handle..i could hear them rattling around in there as the mill reached the end of the cycle...so i sifted them out and let them go...

a pound and a half of desiccated mashed potatoes rendered something just over half a cup of potato flour...i paid $2.99 for three pounds of red potatoes at the store this morning ( to replace what i was using ) so a half cup of potato flour is going to run $1.495 just in feed stock...one rarely sees potato flour at the supermarket ( the one i go to has almond, banana, coconut, and who knows what else...but not potato ) and if this is an indication of cost one sees why...the kicker is the recipes i find for potato bread all call for minimal amounts of potato flour ( one calls for two tablespoons ) but all run heavy on "idahoan" mashed potato flakes...one senses a marketing ploy...i will continue to search fro real potato bread recipes so i can get a fair grounding in how much it will cost me in flour, time, and energy to produce it...i have not looked into the cost of mashed potato flakes...and i may not...seems a cheap out when you are trying to quantify work.