BAKED POTATO

This is the trader buying, not selling, and he wants it cooked. He pays 1 emerald per 4 for baked potatoes, and that offer closes once he has taken what he wants for the visit. No job villager will buy the baked version at any tier, so this is the whole market for it.

The word "baked" is doing real work in that sentence. A raw potato has to go through a furnace, a smoker, or a campfire before it qualifies, so the trade is really pricing your fuel and your time as much as the potato itself. A field of grown potatoes is only the first half of turning them into emeralds this way.

That extra step also makes this one of the few uses for a potato surplus that is not eating it yourself. A farm left running unattended tends to overproduce, and a baked potato that nobody is hungry enough to eat is otherwise dead weight in a chest until this trade turns it into something spendable.

The Wandering Trader buys Baked Potato, paying 1 emerald per 4 until that slot locks for the rest of the visit. It is one of only six items he purchases at all, with any single trader offering two of those six at random.

No standard villager profession lists baked potato in its trade table, buying or selling, so a trader is the only emerald route in either direction for the cooked item.

The Wandering Trader has no home village and no workstation of his own. He appears near wherever you are playing, two leashed llamas trailing him, stays for a stretch, and moves on regardless of whether a trade happened. There is nothing to place and nothing to break to steer him toward buying anything in particular.

This one runs opposite to most trades on this site: you hand over baked potatoes and he hands back emeralds, at 1 emerald per 4, until the offer runs dry for that visit.

Whether he is buying baked potato at all was decided the moment he spawned, since he only offers two of his six possible purchases per encounter. If he is and you expect to keep selling, a name tag is worth the trip: a named mob will not despawn, so tagging him turns a one-off encounter into a standing buyer.

Cook before you carry. Raw potatoes are worth nothing to this trade and nothing to any villager either, so run a stack through a furnace, smoker, or campfire before making the trip; a smoker halves the wait compared to a plain furnace if you have the fuel to spare.

Save some for eating. This trade is for genuine surplus, the potatoes a farm produces faster than you can burn through them, not a reason to bake and sell food you would otherwise need in your own inventory.

Like every buying offer this one has a limit before it locks for the visit, so a large surplus is better spread across more than one Wandering Trader over time than dumped on the first one you happen to find.

A baked potato comes out of a furnace, a smoker or a campfire, all three from the same raw potato. The smoker is twice as fast and the campfire costs no fuel at all, so the only real argument for the furnace is that you already have one lit.

The reason to buy them ready-made is fuel and attention rather than potatoes. Cooking a stack is a stack of fuel and a walk back to check on it, and a villager hands them over already done while you carry on with something else.

Raw potatoes are edible and not worth eating; the baked one restores several times as much and never poisons you, which is the whole point of the trip through the fire.