The Fresh Loaf

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Sweet Potato Buns / Rolls

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Sweet Potato Buns / Rolls

Some of my customers asked if I was making buns for Thanksgiving dinner, so I said I'd give it a go. Sweet Potato buns seem to be just the thing. I did a sweep of this site and the internet in general to look at recipes; none quite filled the bill (the recipe needs to be easily scalable to several dozen buns and the ingredients can't be too expensive or difficult to handle, or time-consuming to prepare). So I tested and tweaked, and came up with the following.

The sweet potatoes were roasted then put through the food mill, so the resulting mash is not too wet. If you are using boiled sweet potatoes or something like pumpkin or squash, you'll have to adjust the liquid in the recipe accordingly to make a soft dough.

I mixed the wet ingredients, then the dry ingredients and then mixed them all together. I used the Ankarsrum and let it run for probably six to eight minutes, or until a soft, sticky dough was achieved. Note that with the sweet potato this will indeed be a sticky dough! One thing to note - rather than using two eggs, I used one egg and the equivalent to another egg using ground flax seed mixed with water 1:2. That makes it much easier to scale (e.g. if you need 75 grams of this, then you can use one large egg plus about 8 grams of flax seed mixed with 17 grams of water). It's also cheaper and the flax seeds are a nice addition to the buns. The durum atta flour also adds good flavour.

I left the dough to rise for about two hours, folding gently once during that time. When it was risen and puffy, I scaled the buns to 85 grams, shaped them into rounds and put them in a greased pan, not quite touching. They then went into the fridge overnight (covered with greased plastic wrap). In the morning I baked them in a 350F oven, straight out of the fridge, for about 20 minutes, turning the pan once.

I'm really happy with these. The aroma of the dough and the finished buns is excellent, and they taste really good. The crumb has that nice 'shred' you look for in an enriched bun, and is nice and moist. A keeper!

Note that some of the buns don't have smooth tops. This is because I put half of them 'pinched' side up to see how they would look. It didn't add anything, so I'll bake them all smooth side up in the future. :)

Comments

Yippee's picture
Yippee

They look perfect! I've got to make these some time! Thanks for sharing!

Yippee

Yippee's picture
Yippee

    

The dough smells like perfume!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Wow, that was fast! :) Happy almost-Canadian Thanksgiving, Yippee! Hope you enjoy them.

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

... how did they turn out? The dough looks nice!

Yippee's picture
Yippee

 

 

 

Thank you, LL, for sharing the formula with us!  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

The bread tastes great!  Unfortunately, it was a bit under-proved so the crumb does not have the "threads" like yours. Let me see if I can do better next time.

leslieruf's picture
leslieruf

. Leslie

Yippee's picture
Yippee

It's fun!

 

Yippee

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Oh Yippee, that's so pretty! What an imaginative presentation; I love it! :)

Flour.ish.en's picture
Flour.ish.en

I have never used sweet potatoes and there is no reason not to do it, other than I've found some recipe and bread that inspires me to get baking. This one does. The ingredients, process and final result make so much sense to me. Lovely rolls. Keep tweaking and thanks for the recipe!

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Sweet potatoes are awesome; they make the dough and bread so soft (like regular potatoes) but with the added benefit of that yummy flavour. Note that there are lots of different kinds of sweet potatoes and yams, and they will probably all make the bread slightly different (texture and taste). Lots of experimenting to do!

Isand66's picture
Isand66

I love using sweet potatoes and have posted many bakes using it.  I made some rolls with pecans and cranberries for Thanks Giving not that look ago that came out great.  I like the addition of the cardamom and will have to give that a try soon.  I always bake mine until they are nice and caramelized and at their sweetest peak.

These will be perfect for turkey sandwiches or just some nice cheese.

Happy Baking.

Ian

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

And what a great idea to use sweet potatoes! I am sure they are delicious! I am bookmarking this one!

IceDemeter's picture
IceDemeter

tempting crumbs I've seen in a long time - yum!

I love your choice of spices, and having the durum atta in there would add such a nice subtle background flavour...  I can't use flax (nobody in either my clan or my husband's clan can tolerate it), so hope that I can figure out the hydration to get a similar result with just eggs.  This has all kinds of things that I'm going to have to include in a bake soon...

Bet your customers will adore these!

Hope all is well with you and yours, and glad that you're still baking happy!

Best, Laurie

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Thanks Laurie. If you don't want to use the flax seeds, just do the weight of that ingredient in eggs alone (I've listed it as "eggs & flax" so you can interchange). When I'm doing 8 or 9 dozen of these I prefer not to use that many eggs; that's the only reason I use a flaxseed and water mix to substitute for part of the egg weight. It does add a nice flavour, but if you can't use them, then you can't use them!

Hope you're keeping warm! Happy Thanksgiving... :)

IceDemeter's picture
IceDemeter

up to par today - sorry!

For some reason I understood it as being a combined weight of eggs and flax seed - without water, and then blithely ignored the part in the text where you stated the ratio of flax / water that you used.  Oops!

I don't blame you for wanting to keep the quantity of eggs down, and from all accounts the flax seed can act almost like a tang zhong for holding water to keep the dough easy to work with but releasing it during the bake for a more moist crumb.  That was why I was a bit concerned about maybe needing to tweak the hydration if just using eggs, since there wouldn't be that "add back" part during the bake.

As for keeping warm - well, the winds are now down to about 70km (from 90ish) and it has stopped snowing :-)  It is supposed to warm up to low teens later in the week again, so really it's pretty standard fall weather around here.  I'm just hoping that the pressure stabilizes a bit by the end of the week so that I can have at least some chance of estimating fermentation times for my bake!

Hope all is well with you and yours, and that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the clan!

leslieruf's picture
leslieruf

and fluffy rolls. I too will bookmark this!

Leslie