Jars of finished potato flour: cooked on left, raw on right
My farmer friend dropped off a case of potatoes at my house a couple months ago, and after giving a good quantity of them away, and making stuff with potatoes, I thought, ‘How can I make these potatoes last a long time? Could I dehydrate some?” and then I had the idea to make potato flour. I researched it a bit first, and other blogs I found said that it really didn’t matter if the potatoes were cooked or not before making flour out of them.
Well, of course I had to find out for myself.
First, the cooked potato flour:
So I took potatoes (a combination of yukon gold and russett, I believe, all organic), chopped them up and put them with just enough water in the pressure cooker and cooked them (I think it was 3 minutes at pressure) and basically made unsalted, no fat mashed potatoes. Then I spread them into the dehydrator on “fruit rollup” trays and dehydrated them overnight (and into the next day) at 135F, a bit warmer than I usually use, but hey, they were already cooked.
That might have been a mistake–after they were done, my dehydrator looked a bit more warped than I remember…and the layers didn’t fit together quite as well… What I got resembled a hard cracker, and smelled like potato chips.
I broke it into pieces and put it in the Vitamix…
And reduced it to powder, which I poured through a strainer into a jar.
The cracker was so tough, even the Vitamix couldn’t pulverize all of it, so I was left with some hard crumbs that I just composted (heh, let the worms break them down!). the flour smelled nice, though–like those “potato sticks” we had as kids, and had a golden hue.
Next, the uncooked (raw) potato flour:
I started out with the food processor on the grater blade, and ran the potatoes through whole (they were small), coming up very quickly with a full bowl of grated potatoes.
Then, for good measure (because I read Sally Fallon), I soaked them overnight in warm water with some whey added. Then it was an easy matter to drain and add them to the dehydrator–straight on the trays–without even needing to wring them out, because the dehydrator would do that for me, and this way they spread out easier. These finished overnight at 110F very easily.
The dehydrated grated potato was very light and airy, and while it nearly filled up a blender…
…it reduced down to nearly nothing!
The resulting flour from the raw potatoes looked more grey–not as appetizing–and smelled exactly like raw potatoes (I bet you’ll go smell a potato now, to find out what that smells like 😉 But it is a finer powder than the cooked flour, so might be better for making breads, etc, thickening soups.
So I haven’t actually used the flours yet, so I’m not sure yet what I’ll use them for (except to go into a veggie sunburger recipe of mine, which calls for instant mashed potatoes, but I don’t like the artificial stuff they put in mashed potatoes, so I use potato flour instead, which is usually darned expensive, and now I know why). The cooked potato flour might be more appropriate to sprinkle on top of casseroles to help finish them off, as well as for thickening soups, and adding to veggie burgers, whereas the finer raw flour might have more baking uses.
chocolatepaula 
What purpose does the whey serve? And how does that effect it in terms of being a GF or DF flour?
The whey added to the shredded potato is just a way to “predigest” some of the carbohydrates in it, according to Sally Fallon (Weston Price)–it’s totally not necessary, and does not affect gluten at all. There is no gluten in yoghurt or whey. If “DF” means dairy-free (I’ve just never heard of “DF flour”), then one could also use a splash of water kefir if you wanted to exclude dairy.
For Eating
Potato flour is hygroscopic (meaning attracts water instead of repelling/resisting water). The raw potato flour is very useful in bread for making bread last longer and keeping a moist/fluffy consistency. Try a tablespoon or so per cup or two of flour when baking, you’ll be surprised :).
We’ve tried potato flours and it’s worked nicely but as you mentioned above, processed potato flours are ridden with additives. Unfortunately a flour mill (as we have) tends to gum up with moist flours so we’re waiting till we have a good method of milling to fine flour. Our “bullet” doesn’t seem to do a very good job on flours as your “vitamix” seems to do… ah well.
Interesting–I had not heard that it was hygroscopic, but so is sugar (and why sugar keeps egg foams from loosing water because of that property). Potato has a lot of starch in it, and starch is basically sugar (polysaccharides) so I wonder if other starchy flours would keep bread moist as well! Certainly potato flour (or potato starch–which is something slightly different)is a common ingredient in gluten-free breads. The flour does not seem moist to me at all, however–I think, after dehydrating it, if you pulverize it soon enough, you’d escape the gummyness. But I will say that Vitamix is really good at reducing things to flour in a hurry! It was our most expensive wedding present 😉
Thank you for sharing. My daughter has food allergies. I use potato flour but needed one that wasn’t made in a facility with her allergens. So I am going to try the raw recipe
Thanks for sharing this article.potato powder is the best for giving different flaour to our dishes. plz apply it into your dishes. http://www.potatopowder.org/index.html
I dehydrate raw sliced sweet potatoes on a regular basis – if I toss these dehydrated chips into my vitamix this is “potato flour”, yes?
Yeppers!
Great information! Thank you!
Thank you for the information! Great detail.
This was just the information I was looking for. Thanks for sharing.
Could this homemade flour be used to prepare mashed potatoes? Just wondering…
Great question! I have no idea, but that’s a good idea, as most instant potatoes seem to be dehydrated potatoes with preservatives. It depends, of course, on what potatoes you use, because different potato types have different starch profiles (okay, that’s really scientific, but my mind is recalling one mind-numbing class on starches in Culinary school from several years ago…and some potatoes turned too gummy to be useful in mashed potatoes–I think red potatoes, but am not certain.) Russets are most commonly used for mashed potatoes, I think, and I’ll use Yukon Gold (because I love the flavor).
You could try following the recipe of a common instant potato mix and see if it works. If you do, let me know, thanks!
I was asking because that’s exactly what I am going to try, because I want to compare the results between the homemade potato flour and a mashed potatotes powder to analyze their consistency and flavor. So, I’m goint to try and let you know!
Awesome, Luis! I hope it works out! (lol, I’d also say use plenty of milk, butter, and maybe some garlic, too, but it’s the texture that will be the true test, I suspect…but since potato is starchy, it seems that heating it–especially if you did a raw flour–would make the gelation (thickening) action happen 😉
Excellent post. I’m trying to make my own flour but don’t know where to start. Would I be able to make bread with this flour? Ie I’m making daily kefir milk and all I need is 4 cups of flour with 2 cups of kefir milk.
Wow. I usually make crackers with potato flour, not bread, so I’m not sure… The baguette recipe on this blog calls for potato starch, I think, as well as millet and rice flours. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!
Trying to learn to make flour is awesome – I started about 5 years ago and grind wheat berries to make different flours. There is a ton of information at Bread Beckers which you can find online.
Potato flour makes fried chicken like Col. Sanders Kentucky Fried.
Wow! Thanks for that tip. Very interesting 😉
Hi. This is a good information.
But May I ask,between raw and cooked potato which one you recomment and more useful to do after you already tested.
Thank you in advance.
I think, for myself, the cooked was easier to work with. As to useful…if you are going to use it for things like making crackers, bread, etc., it might be better to use raw, because then the starches would not have gelated with heat yet, so it would work more as a binding agent in, say, gluten-free recipes.
Try making gnocchi-Italian potatoe dumplings.
hello! let me ask for someone who tried exactly to make potato bread ? He/she may share with us information
I’ve made potato crackers–or crackers with half potato flour in them–but not potato bread. I’m thinking the Germans might make a potato bread, though, that’s very dense…
what do you think would happen if you didnt add the whey? i shredded raw potatoes and soaked them in water to make use of the starch leftover to substitute corn starch….
I was just using the soaking in water with whey idea to “pre-digest” some of the starches in the potato. It’s a little overkill, I admit.
Thanks for this experiment. I am catering for a raw party – and considering Shepherd’s Pie. I have yet to try a cauliflower mash potatoes that is yummy. Wondering what you think of adding the dehydrated raw potato powder as a flavoring?
We had mashed cauliflower last night for dinner and it was really good! If you’re doing a raw party, and use raw dehydrated potato flour, I’m not sure you’ll get much flavor from it–and I suspect raw potatoes aren’t easy to digest… The main benefit of potatoes in mashed potatoes, that I can see, is the starch aspect of them. Good luck!
Thanks for the quick and thoughtful response. I am certain that starch is an appeal in potatoes. I am going to experiment with using potato juice or potato flour as a flavoring. I am going to try other base vegetable purees – jicama, parsnips, squash. I will let you know how it turns out.
Thanks! I’d be curious to hear how it turns out. Usually when I’ve done squash purees, they’ve been cooked winter squash (good for leaky gut, so my naturopathic doctor friend tells me). Cashews soaked for 4 hours puree really nice into a good consistency with all the fat they contain, if you can use something other than vegetables (technically they’re a legume, not a nut, so that might still somewhat qualify).
GREAT IDEA! I will add some cashews to my experiment.
Any idea how long this would keep in air tight containers? Thanks.
I just used some of the cooked potato flour I made illustrated in this post a couple weeks ago and it was fine. It will keep for years in an airtight container, I think. Mine was in a glass jar with a tight lid. Smelled fine. Oils are what go rancid, and potatoes are more starchy than oily (if they’re oily at all). Potato flours will keep far longer than rice flours…