While preparing the pepper and eggplant zone last week, I came across an abundance of last year's purple sweet potatoes that had been left in the field and turned up by the most recent round of spading. They were quite happy to sprout themselves and take off growing again, but I gather up a few handfuls to use in the kitchen. Thus the idea for this bread arose. When I looked up recipes on here I saw that I was hardly the first to the idea and Benito in particular had a nice take on it. While there were some good options to work with, I opted to continue in the porridge loaf vein and cook the potatoes and treat them like a porridge addition.
Total Flour 450g
Central Milling bread flour- 80% (360g)
(unspecified) spelt flour- 10% (45g)
(unspecified) rye flour- 5% (25g)
Oliver Farm peanut flour- 5% (25g)
Leaven- 12% (55g)
Water- 80% (360g)
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Salt- ~2tsp
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Purple Sweet Potato Porridge with a dash of cane syrup (250ish grams maybe- I was planning on only doing 120g, but then I had more than that on hand and when I went to add it in, 120g seemed kind of meager, so I just dumped in all of what I had).
Proceeded with my standard method:
1. Mix leaven and water, stir in flour, let autolyse ~1hr (maybe closer to 1.5hr) (@~75 degrees)
2. Pinch in salt, proceed to stretch and folds every ~30 min for next 3 hrs. (@~70-75 degrees)
3. let sit to continue bulk fermentation overnight (@~60s degrees)
4. pre-shape, then shape in morning. Retard in refrigerator for ~10hrs.
5. Bake- 500 covered 20min, 500 uncovered 10 min., 440 20 min, 400 5 min, let sit in turned off oven 10 min
Thoughts- Pretty and purple, though it lost some of the robustness of color in cooking. Can't say I especially noted a different flavor from the potatoes though, so maybe not the most worthwhile use of delicious purple sweet potatoes, even gleaned ones. The crumb was nice and soft and airy. A good crust when it came out of the over, but as always, the Georgia humidity destroyed that by morning. I had a little bit harder time shaping it than I expected. As I was doing the folds, the dough was very easy to work with; I wonder if I let it bulk ferment a tad too long and the gluten broke down a bit (that being said, the crumb looks a bit under-fermented). I didn't score it very aggressively because I didn't expect much of an ear with the sweet potato porridge and more extensible peanut and spelt flours- in retrospect I might have been able to score a bit more at an angle down the whole loaf. Sesame seeds on the outside is a nice flavor note.
Overall- pretty looking but nothing super rich flavor wise.
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Such a beautiful bake John, both the crumb and crust have such beautiful colour. I may have missed it but how did you add the purple sweet potatoes to the dough?
Benny
Thank you! I just stretched the dough out in all directions then spread the "porridge" mush over the surface, then proceeded to fold the dough as with a set of folds. I don't know if it's the best way though- the potatoes (and fruit and nuts when I've made other breads) end up breaking through the dough after a few folds, but then it all comes back together after resting.
Surprising that there wasn’t some more sweet potato flavor given the substantial amount you included. But I guess it’s a delicate flavor.
Could you comment on the addition of peanut flour? I’m curious about it. Flavor, texture, nutrition,?
-Sumi
I won't claim to be a super taster, so maybe others would pick up on it more. It definitely made the crumb more tender though.
As for peanut flour, this is just my second or third time trying it. I would say it adds a little mild, sweet richness, something more along the lines of spelt than rye. The first time I used it, I used a higher percentage (maybe 10 or 15%) and the dough seemed unusually extensible even after developing the gluten. So much so that the loaf had less oven spring and ear formation. A glance at some scientific journal abstracts seems to confirm this. I thought a bit of extra extensibility might be beneficial in a loaf with add-ins. Mostly I just like the idea of incorporating peanuts into bread though.
Beautiful bake! I love the purple color and the crumb looks really nice and airy. Did you steam or boil the sweet potatoes? I'm curious now too how one could go about trying to concentrate that flavor. Roasting comes to mind but then incorporating them would be challenging unless they were added in small pieces since roasting would 'set' the outside layer. I imagine the sweet potatoes made the crumb nice and soft (like dried potato flakes do in 'old school' bakes) and the combination of sweet potato and sesame seeds sounds like a great combination. I've never thought of incorporating peanut flour in bread.
I fried the potatoes in a pan for a few minutes and then simmered them a while until very soft then mashed them up so that it was basically mashed potato consistency.
Yes, I think roasting might be a good option to enhance flavor, then mash them (as Benito did with his loaf I linked to) or maybe blend them to get a really smooth consistency if you want the potato throughout vs. as small chunks. It might be good to go as light as possible on oil if roasting though so there's not excess oil incorporated into the dough when the potatoes are added in (unless a closer, tenderer crumb is the goal).