One potato
Two potato
Three potato
Flour!

Appropriate for vegan, vegetarian, and Low FODMAP diets, potato flour is naturally gluten-free. Ground from peeled and dried potatoes, it is an easy way for bakers to create yeast breads with a better shelf life as the starch in potatoes attracts and holds water, helping to increase the moisture content in baked goods. Potato flour, when substituted for some of the all-purpose, bread, or whole wheat flour in a recipe, makes yeast dough easier to shape and handle due to lower gluten content. Adding a small amount to gluten-free baking recipes gives them a more tender crumb as well. It's a natural thickener for soups, stews, gravies, and pan sauces.

Below are four how-tos from back in the day when potato flour wasn't commercially available. Read on.


POTATO PASTE

Pound some boiled potatoes very fine, and while warm, add butter sufficient to make the mash hold together. Or mix it with an egg; and before it gets cold, flour the board pretty well to prevent it from sticking, and roll the paste to the thickness wanted. If allowed to get quite cold before it is put on the dish, it will be apt to crack.


POTATO BREAD

Weigh half a pound of mealy potatoes after they are boiled or steamed and rub them while warm into a pound and a half of fine flour, dried a little before the fire. When thoroughly mixed, put in a spoonful of good yeast, a little salt, and warm milk and water sufficient to work into a dough. Let it stand by the fire to rise for an hour and a half, then make it into a loaf, and bake it in a tolerably brisk oven. If baked in a tin the crust will be more delicate, but the bread dries sooner. To two pounds of well-boiled mealy potatoes, rubbed between the hands till they are as fine as flour, mix in thoroughly two large double handfuls of wheat flour, three good spoonfuls of yeast, a little salt, and warm milk enough to make it the usual stiffness of dough. Let it stand for three or four hours to rise, then mold it, make it up, and bake it like common bread.

POTATO ROLLS

Boil three pounds of potatoes, bruise and work them with two ounces of butter, and as much milk as will make them pass through a cullender. Take nearly three-quarters of a pint of yeast, and half a pint of warm water; mix them with the potatoes, pour the whole upon five pounds of flour, and add some salt. Knead it well: if not of proper consistency, add a little more warm milk and water. Let it stand before the fire an hour to rise; work it well and make it into rolls. Bake them for about half an hour, in an oven not quite so hot as for bread. The rolls will eat well, toasted and buttered.


POTATO SNOW

The whitest sort of potatoes must be selected, and free from spots. Set them over the fire in cold water; when they begin to crack, strain off the water, and put them into a clean stewpan by the side of the fire till they are quite dry, and fall to pieces. Rub them through a wire sieve on the dish they are to be sent up in, and do not disturb them afterward.


1/2 pound of potatoes (250 grams) will yield about 1 cup of potato flour (160 grams) when making one's own.


Source (edited excerpts from):
The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all its Various Branches,
Adapted to the Use of Private Families: also a Variety of Original and Valuable information
by Mrs. Mary Eaton 1823

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