The Quest for Purple Bread
There's no rational explanation for why I've been trying to make purple bread, but that's what I've been doing lately. In this batch I mashed a purple sweet potato and added it to the flour. The color is definitely purple, leaning slightly toward pink.
The flavor of the sweet potato is subtle but it gives the bread a hint of sweetness and that soft pillowy texture you associate with potato breads. The crumb is a little dense but that's to be expected when you add mashed potatoes to a bread.
Ingredients:
- 490g bread flour
- 30g dark rye flour
- 308g filtered water @ 90-95’F
- 180g levain
- 12g sea salt
- 1/4 tsp yeast
- 150g purple sweet potato mash (see below)
To make the sweet potato mash, I poked a few holes in the potato with a fork and baked it at 350'F for about an hour and a half until it was soft when poked. I skinned it and mashed it with a fork. Once it cooled to room temperature it's ready to use in the bread.
I used a stand mixer to integrate the potato, flours and water. This started out really goopy so I had to add more flour (accounted for in the ingredients above).
I did a 30 minute autolyse, 5 hour bulk ferment at room temp (w/ 4x folds in first 90 minutes) and then an overnight proof in the refrigerator. I baked at 450'F for 38 minutes covered and 14 minutes uncovered.
I have a full writeup with more photos and instructions here: https://alegrebread.com/2019/05/23/purple-sweet-potato-sourdough/
Comments
Wow - nice!
Blue (including the blue component of purple) seems to be hard to capture in baking - things that turn out pink or other colours when they went in obviously purple, seems to happen a lot. (Other than artificial blue of course, but that would be "cheating" I guess. ?)
Water from boiling ordinary beets gives very strong dark red, but I don't know if there are truly purple beets with a strong enough colour - and even if there are, maybe purple-beet-water would lose its blue tint and become pink when baked in bread too.
Thanks for the beets idea! I had forgotten about that. Someone else had mentioned using black rice flour to give a purple color as well.
I've tried using beets. The dough is a lovely fuchsia, but after baking the colour almost disappears. Someone suggested that the colour stays better if the beets are roasted and pureed, but I haven't tried that. Walnuts will add a bit of almost purple tint to dough too! The sweet potato looks good, and also makes good bread. :)