After church today I commenced on some serious research….on vegetable bread. As usual, I couldn’t bear to throw out leftovers, so I decided to use the beets in today’s batch of bread. And voila’! What fun bread! Check this out:
And here’s how I did it.
Beet Bread
I started with a small tupperware container of leftover fresh beets. I put them in the food processor and pureed them as thoroughly as I was able. I ended up with about 1 2/3 c. beet puree. I poured 1/2 c. warm milk into the processor and whirled those beets a little more.
Then I poured the beet puree into my kitchenaid bowl and stirred in
- 1/3 c. very warm water
- 1/4 c. melted butter
- 2 T. sugar
- 2 t. salt
- 1 egg
- 1 c. flour
- 1 T. yeast
- 1 t. coarsely ground pepper
I let that mixture bubble for about 20 minutes and then added another 4 c. of flour (approximately. You may need to add a fair bit more or less, depending on how humid it is and how much beet puree you use) until the dough formed a large pink ball on the dough hook. I kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes on speed 2. Then I let the dough rise for an hour.
After the dough doubled in size, I punched it down and formed it into two smaller loaves. I let these two loaves rise in thoroughly floured baskets.
I have to digress a moment here to talk about the amazing texture of this dough. I actually thought of Play-do while I was working with this dough. Every child who has ever played with the standard colors of Play-do knows that the yellow Play-do is the VERY best texture. Who knows why; it just is. Well, if you can imagine, without gagging, bread dough being that wonderful texture of yellow Play-do…that’s what this beet dough was like.
After the loaves have doubled in size, I turned them out VERY gently onto pizza stones and put them in the oven. I baked them at 350° until their internal temperatures were 190° (remember, that quick-read thermometer is really valuable! There was no way that I could tell when the bread was nicely browned because it was so RED!)
I let the loaves cool on a rack. Well, okay, the truth is…we couldn’t wait and sliced one up right away. It was just delicious with butter melting on thick slabs of this colorful bread. The flavor was very mild and we realized that the most intense thing about fresh beets is NOT their flavor but their color. Even someone who doesn’t like beets would probably really like this bread.
bk
4 Comments
September 18, 2006 at 12:17 pm
OH MY you have SO got to do Sugar High Friday “Surprise Inside”!! BTW because I’m a beet fiend there are tons of beet recipes in the archives, especially ways to use up already-cooked beets.
September 18, 2006 at 12:34 pm
It’s funny….my kids kept saying, “This bread is so PINK it seems like it should be sweet!”
bk
October 9, 2006 at 3:14 am
[...] I had leftover beets, see….and leftover spinach. And I’m really intrigued with using vegetables in breads, so today I played. This is what I ended up with: [...]
October 14, 2006 at 1:35 am
[...] Since I experimented with beets and spinach as ingredients for homemade bread, I’ve been mulling over which other ingredients could bring colors to bread. Today I tried some ingredients that would give me lovely autumn colors. Because I used spices and not vegetables, the two different doughs have very distinctive flavors. I was very pleased with how this experiment turned out, but I can’t figure out what to call this bread! [...]