Vegan Potato Flatbread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is my flatbread chewy? ›

The flour you used may have contained too much protein. Protein is one of the ingredients that help yeast bread brown. Use bread flour that is purchased at a grocery store or a national brand of all-purpose flour.

Potato bread has been a staple in Ireland for centuries, not only because of the amount of potatoes we ate pre-Famine, but also because Ireland was not a great place to grow soft wheat due to the weather. Boiled potatoes can be mixed with any flour to make a rough potato patty that can be cooked in a pan or on a range.

Cook the flatbread on medium heat – too high heat will burn them. And yet, too low heat will cause them to become too hard when cooled. It is very important to place the cooked flatbread wrapped in a clean kitchen cloth. This causes the steam in the bread to cool inside the bread and keeps it soft.

It is a type of bread that is made with mashed potatoes added to the dough. This bread is typically made with the same basic ingredients as other types of bread, such as flour, water, yeast, and salt, but the addition of potatoes gives it a denser texture and a slightly sweet flavor.

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Over-kneading has a tendency to result in chewy bread. Here's how to tell if you've kneaded enough. Another possibility—you used bread flour when all-purpose flour would do. If a recipe with bread flour turned out chewier than you like, try it with all-purpose and knead only as much as the recipe directs.

Alternative names. Potato bread goes by many regional names, including slims, fadge, potato cake, potato farls, and tatie bread in Ireland. "Potato cake" can actually refer to numerous dishes.

Either way, the potatoes boost the overall nutritional value, making it comparable to whole-wheat bread for fiber and nutrients such as zinc and iron. Potato bread has about the same calories and protein, but it provides significantly more potassium than either white or whole-wheat bread.

The makeup of potato bread is fairly simple, it turns out, but its virtues are many. According to the diligent scientists of Cook's Illustrated, the starch from the mashed potatoes allows the bread to stay soft much longer than traditional wheat bread, which starts to turn stale within a day.

How to keep flatbread soft? ›

Have ready a plate lined with a clean tea towel so you can put your cooked flatbreads on it to keep them warm and soft.

We sometimes advise checking the internal temperature of a loaf of bread before making the decision to pull it from the oven. A properly baked loaf typically registers a temperature between 195 and 210 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, depending upon the type of bread.

The potato bread brand Martin's lists turmeric and annatto — spices that can be used as natural dyes in food — as coloring ingredients in its potato bread. Many other brands do the same. For example, Oroweat Country Potato Bread and Stroehmann Dutch Country Premium Potato Bread both use turmeric and annatto.

Lorencz shares that potato breads might be another landmine to look out for if blood sugar is your concern. She states, "With 22 grams of carbohydrate and less than 1 gram of fiber, this bread will quickly raise your blood sugar and potentially lead to a crash shortly after.

Too much water can also produce a damp loaf. Try less water with your flour. Uneven heat in your oven can be the culprit – if you loaf is nicely golden on the outside but gummy or moist in the inside, it's baking too quickly on the outside. Trying reducing the temperature you're baking at and bake for a bit longer.

If your bread is especially hard, brush the outside with water before wrapping it. Then, heat it on the center rack of your oven for about 30 minutes for a whole loaf; or 15 to 20 minutes for a partial loaf, or if you have a long, skinny loaf like a baguette.