The potatonik is a first-time try from Jewish Cooking In America by Joan Nathan. It's a yeast dough that's half grated potatoes, half flour, and baked over sliced onions. It's supposed to come out gold and crispy. That should be about half an hour from now and I'm hoping for the best.
I usually follow a recipe completely the first time. This time, I'm deviating on 2 points. My potatoes are very thin-skinned golds (I could peel them by scratching with my fingernail), so I didn't bother to peel them before grating. And it has a lot of salt, all of which goes in the dough before the raising. Salt does interfere with yeast, and anyway I thought that it would be odd to have unseasoned onions under a salty dough, so I split the salt in thirds - part over the onions, part in the dough and part sprinkled over the top. I'm still nervous about the amount of salt, but at least it'll be evenly distributed. And the dough rose really well.
I'm having fun with the book, which came from Half Price Books. I got it home and half-read before I realized I had an autographed copy. Joan Nathan was thanking somebody for welcoming her to Tulsa. How it got from Tulsa to Minneapolis, I'll never know.
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