16 August 2020 – at Ester, the most recent eating
I first tried the fermented potato bread at Ester years ago and it was one of the most delicious breads I had ever eaten – this was before I started cooking, before I even knew it was made of fermented potato, before I even knew what fermentation was.
Late last year, I decided I wanted to have a go at making it. At this stage, I’d never fermented anything or even made bread lol.
I googled “Ester bread” and read on chocolatesuze’s blog that it was a fermented potato bread. Googling “fermented potato bread” led me to a recipe from Amass Restaurant in Copenhagen which looked like the primary source of other fermented potato bread articles and posts. The original recipe looks like it has been taken down but I took a screenshot of the cache here:
INGREDIENTS
- 20ounces (about 550 grams) medium-size Yukon Gold potatoes (about 6)
- 1½tablespoons (30 grams) fine sea salt
- 10ounces (300 grams) plain yogurt
- 1packet active dry yeast
- 4cups, approximately, (550 grams) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 3tablespoons (42 grams) unsalted butter, melted
Not a potato expert, I hassled my chef friend, James (sorry James) for a week for an Australian Yukon Gold potato alternative – “the recipe says they should be baking potatoes, are you sure those potatoes are baking potatoes etc etc”. James suggested Desiree potatoes which worked just great, thanks James!
The slightly more difficult aspect of following the Amass recipe was keeping the potatoes at at least 30°C for 10 days. Amass suggested this could be done in a room at that temperature but I don’t have a set temp room surprisingly. Happily, another blog post suggested using a dehydrator so I promptly ordered the largest one I could afford to ensure I could fit the 1.2kg of potatoes needed for the recipe. PS this works only if your potatoes are in a vac seal bag or … well they’ll dehydrate.
Of course I had perfectly estimated the correct size needed.
After 10 days, the potatoes were shiny and mushy and tasted like salt and vinegar chips. They smell sour as well once you open the bag (see video).
Mixed into a dough and then grilled over fire in my Kamado Joe, they were sadly not as fluffy as the Ester bread. I considered this the key issue. Particularly as I know nothing about bread, I couldn’t even sensibly hypothesise as to why (does it need… more… yeast? Less… dense… flour? More… rising? Ok I’ll stop, real bakers will be finding this so painful to read).
Ultimately I ate it as a flatbread as suggested by Amass, served with Momofuku pigs head bacon dashi butter I had made and my favourite always Yarra Valley Caviar salmon roe. It was delicious but not at all Ester’s bread.
This year, Ester’s potato bread was hands down for me one of the best parts of lockdown v1 in Sydney. I had been travelling throughout March 2020 in Barcelona, San Sebastian and Lisbon and came back to the first of a 14 day in-home lockdown.
Ester bread, in my house, March 2020
I almost cried a little, eating it on my plate, in my house; it was the first taste of my favourite life before this crazy new world became normal. I’m still so grateful each time I’ve been able to eat it since in the restaurant, one of my favourites in Sydney.
When Somekind Press, began publishing books with some of my favourite restaurants to support them during Covid, I was so excited when the Ester book was announced. Although the book itself didn’t have the recipe for the fermented potato bread, Chef Mat Lindsay was so incredibly generous in releasing it to the Somekind Press subscriber list.
After having tried the Amass recipe, I was really interested in working out how the Ester bread was so much fluffier – the key differences looked to be the addition of starter, less potato, wholemeal flour, a different potato, a mouli.
Instead of Dutch cream potatoes, I subbed in the most wonderful Gourmet Potato Andean Sunrise potatoes, (with the intent of repeating this recipe with the listed Dutch cream potatoes in the future although I recently got my hands on the Gourmet Potato’s Julia Creme potatoes which are apparently a fuller, more delicious flavour than Dutch Creams so RIP my future of having resolved this Ester bread obsession).
I then bought a 40cm mouli solely for the purpose of making this recipe, noting that pre this recipe, I had to google what a mouli was.
Following the Mat Lindsay recipe otherwise to the tee, I mouli’d my non Dutch cream potatoes then vac sealed and left them to ferment at room temperature. After 3 days, my amateur self realised room temperature in September Sydney was 18C so in they went into the dehydrator for 8 more days at 35C to then be mixed with starter, wholemeal flour and my favourite Wholegrain Milling Co white bakers flour and turned into the ugliest, fattest, stickiest dough balls ever because I have no bread skills or experience lol.
I’m still saving up for a woodfire oven so instead I used two fire starters in my Kamado Joe and a substantive amount of charcoal to get up to 315C quickly. Then, 6 dough balls went in on indirect fire, one at a time so I could test different ways of cooking them.
Key lessons: use a flat base not the grill grates to avoid sinkage (see bread 1), don’t keep opening the kamado every 2 minutes unless you want dense bread (see bread 2), brush the tops with oil or butter to brown the tops (or cheat brown the tops with handheld embers which I did because placing the bread buns upside down on the grill grates deflated their wonderful puffiness), trust in the 5-8 min bake time to get the best rise, move the dough away from the fire to avoid burning the base etc.
“The 6 Stages of Potato Bread” – September 2020
Thank goodness, by the time I got to the last one, it was fluffy, chewy and decently charcoal browned. My one comment is I forgot how much more top charred the Ester bread was so I didn’t spend enough time cheat-embering the top lol.
Without the skills to make kefir cream or dashi jelly, I served it to myself on my favourite Kurieto Tableware plate with Pepe Saya creme fraiche and my home brew sake cured Yarra Valley Caviar salmon roe and inhaled it.
Thank you so much Mat Lindsay for sharing your recipe and Somekind for making it available. And go eat the fermented potato bread at Ester – if you haven’t, or have, my personal recommendation is that a million times is probably enough (but I’ll have to let you know).
Video of my first go
Mat Lindsay’s Recipe with my notes in italics
Makes 30 x 130g rolls
INGREDIENTS
500g Dutch cream potatoes, peeled (I used The Gourmet Potato’s Andean Sunrise potatoes and was still delicious)
750g water, heated to 27°C
200g levain/starter (I used a sourdough starter)
900g white baker’s flour (My fav is from Wholegrain Milling Co)
100g wholemeal baker’s flour
25g salt, plus extra for fermenting
INSTRUCTIONS
Boil the potatoes until fully cooked, then strain and pass through a mouli to form a very smooth purée.
Weigh out the mix and add an extra 2% salt (eg. 500g potato/10g salt ), then place in a vacuum-seal bag and seal, removing all the air.
Leave at room temperature for approximately 5 days, until the bag is puffed and the potatoes taste sour and fermented. (Because it was winter and 18C inside my house, I put it inside my dehydrator at 35C for 8 days after leaving it at room temperature for 3 days and it was fine after. It didn’t puff very much but was still quite fermented at the end). Refrigerate until needed.
When ready to make the dough, mix the warm water, starter and 200g of the fermented potato puree together thoroughly in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment added (keep the rest of the potato in the fridge for next time).
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together at medium speed until smooth and elastic, approximately 8 minutes. (Be careful to not let the dough get too hot by mixing for too long or at too high a speed – it will also be a little wetter than you think it should be at this stage, but that is what you are after.) (The dough is super duper wet and sticky. I had a tip to wet my hands to handle it which helped.)
Leave the dough to bulk prove at room temperature for 4-5 hours, giving it a fold every 30 minutes or so. At this stage you can choose to refrigerate overnight to develop the flavour further or go straight to shaping.) (I refrigerated overnight and confirm it was delicious. I haven’t tried an on the day cook though).
Once bulk proved, roll the dough out into portions as you would for bread/dinner rolls. (At ester we usually divide it into 130g pieces but bigger or smaller – that’s completely up to you.) (Mine were 130g-200g in size, both were fine depending on your preferences).
Leave it to prove again at room temperature for 1 hour, or until nearly doubled in size.
When ready to cook, either bake in an extremely hot pizza oven (in which they will take somewhere around 3-5 minutes), grill over charcoal, or even flatten out a bit and cook in an oiled pan as for a flatbread. (I baked in my closed kamado at 315C for around 6-8minutes then charred the top by putting embers on top because turning them over onto the grill deflated the nice fluffiness).
Ester, 46-52 Meagher St, Chippendale NSW 2008
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