Mashed Potato Sourdough Focaccia

Why You’ll Love Mashed Potato Sourdough Focaccia

• Leftovers: This is the perfect use for your leftover mashed potatoes! If you don’t have leftovers, you can quickly makes some using potato flakes and still enjoy this recipe any time!
• Super Soft Texture: This focaccia bread is so soft thanks to mashed potato in the dough.
• Toppings: This recipe is similar to my traditional sourdough focaccia recipe—it’s a blank canvas for any toppings you can imagine!

Important Ingredients

• Sourdough Starter – Use an active/ripe sourdough starter (doubled in size/bubbly/mild sour aroma) to mix the levain.
• Bread Flour – Use a bread flour with 12.5% protein content. If you want to use all-purpose flour, you’ll need to decrease some of the water in the recipe – and the amount depends on how hydrated your mashed potatoes are.
• Water – I use tap water in this dough. Warm it if you are trying to keep your dough warm for fermentation.
• Mashed Potato – The thing that really sets this recipe apart is incorporating about a cup of mashed potatoes in the dough. See my recipe notes for substitution options.
• Salt – I love this flaky sea salt on top of this focaccia bread.
• Herbs – My favorite is some dried oregano, but any favorite dried or fresh herbs will work sprinkled on top. This is optional, and you can mix up what flavors you include with this recipe.
• Olive Oil – Use an olive oil that you like the flavor of. It will come through to the focaccia bread when baked – we prefer a light tasting oil.

Mix the Levain

I always start off a sourdough recipe by mixing a levain from my bubbly, active sourdough starter. This sets my bread up for success and gives me the most active yeast to work with in my dough.

1:10:10 levain (ready in 10-12 hours/overnight): This recipe calls for levain mixed the night before you want to mix your dough. Prepare the levain and keep it overnight at 78-80ºF. It will be ready in approximately 10-12 hours (overnight). Mix together:

• 5 grams of ripe/mature sourdough starter
• 55 grams water
• 55 grams all purpose or bread flour

Cover and let sit overnight at 78ºF until doubled in size, bubbly and active. Note: You can also mix up a levain based on when you want it to be ready by manipulating the ratios.

Sourdough Starter: If you have a ripe, bubbly, active sourdough starter, you can substitute 100 grams of bubbly starter for the levain in this recipe.

Bulk Fermentation and Coil Folds

Once the levain is ripe, bubbly and at least doubled in size, it’s time to mix the dough. Add 100 grams of ripe levain to a bowl with your mashed potatoes, water, salt and bread flour. Mix together with a dough whisk or your fingers until a sticky dough forms. Keep in mind that the water content of mashed potatoes will vary, so you may need to add a little extra water or extra flour to account for the liquid content in your mashed potatoes. This is a higher hydration recipe, so your focaccia dough should be fairly sticky. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.

Coil Folds

After letting the mashed potato focaccia dough rest for 30 minutes, begin the process of coil folds. Coil folding is a technique of picking up the dough from the middle and letting the dough fall down onto and under itself, resulting in a coil. Perform 4-6 coil folds. The dough will be very sticky for this first set of coil folds but will strengthen over time. Wet your hands with water. Place your hands under the middle of the dough and pull up. The dough will stretch up (but should not tear) and release from the bottom of the bowl. Once the dough releases, let the dough fall back under itself. Repeat the process for both sides of dough. Then turn the container and repeat the coil fold. Don’t worry if the dough is super sticky for the first one or two coil folds. It will transform into beautiful sourdough focaccia dough throughout this process. I find it very helpful to watch this process before attempting it. After your first set of coil folds, cover and let rest for 30 minutes.

Repeat 4-6 coil folds every 30 minutes for a total of 4 rounds. After your fourth set of coil folds, cover and let your sourdough focaccia dough rest for 1.5-2 hours.

Shaping Dough and Proofing

After the long bulk fermentation, pour olive oil in a 12 inch round or 9 by 13 metal baking pan. Tip the pan around so the oil covers the entire bottom of the baking pan – add a little more oil if needed. To avoid your focaccia sticking to the pan, you can also place parchment paper in the pan first and add oil on top of the parchment paper before dumping your dough into the pan.

Dump Mashed Potato Sourdough Focaccia dough into the pan and stretch slowly to fill the edges of the pan. Pull up gently on the underside of the dough to stretch it into place. If it doesn’t want to stretch, let the dough rest for a minute and then try again. Cover the pan of dough with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for about 3-5 hours at 78-80ºF until doubled, airy and jiggly. If it doesn’t feel this way, warm it up a little and give it more time to rise.

At this point you can also stick the dough in the refrigerator for an optional cold ferment before letting the dough rise, which can bring some extra flavor and color to the focaccia. Pull out of the refrigerator and let rise until doubled and bubbly before baking.

Baking the Focaccia

Once the dough has doubled in size and is ready to bake, preheat oven to 450ºF. Drizzle more olive oil (about 30 grams/2 Tablespoons) over the top of the dough. Spread it out with your hands so it evenly covers the dough. Take your fingers and gently dimple the dough. Start at the top and work your way down the dough until the entire focaccia is dimpled and bubbly. Top the dough with flaky sea salt if desired. You can also get creative and customize with your favorite herbs or other focaccia toppings.

Bake Mashed Potato Sourdough Focaccia for 25-30 minutes until bubbly, crispy and light golden brown on top. Let cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool to room temperature before slicing. Enjoy!

Substitutions

• Mashed Potatoes: Mashed potatoes are pretty central to this recipe. If you don’t have any potatoes at all and still want focaccia, you’ll want to make my traditional sourdough focaccia bread. You can substitute 200 grams of mashed and boiled potatoes for the mashed potatoes in this recipe if desired.
• Flour: If you don’t have bread flour on hand, decrease the water in the recipe by 50 grams and use all-purpose flour. The amount of water you need will be impacted by how much liquid is in your potatoes, so you may need a little more or a little less.
• Olive Oil: Any flavored olive oil can be substituted in this dough. The focaccia takes on some of the flavor of the oil, so choose one you really like.
  

How to Store Leftovers

Store leftovers at room temperature for up to 24 hours and then slice and put in an airtight container or bag. Freeze for up to a couple months.

If you liked this, you’ll also like…

• Sourdough Mashed Potato Rolls
• Fluffy Potato Bread
• Sourdough Focaccia Bread
• Cheesy Garlic Sourdough Focaccia
• Caprese Sourdough Focaccia
• Sourdough Discard Focaccia Bread