Even though we usually don’t celebrate Halloween over here, I just thought that this might count as a Halloween post. Just imagine I baked this bread with some blood…

I wanted to bake bread with beets for quite a while now. Last weekend I even managed to roast some beets. I wanted to puree them and them throw them into a loaf of bread to colour it red. But then P and I ended up renting a car, driving to our favourite restaurant in Leipzig (post follows tomorrow) and the next day I found myself snacking on the cold, roasted beets.

When I cam home from work yesterday, I though about beet bread again. Should I buy some beets? But then I would have to roast them or grate them or whatever and I wasn’t in the mood for it. Five minutes later I remembered that our supermarket sells some weird vegetable juices (two flavours: sauerkraut and beets) and so I bought a box of beet juice.

Marbled Beet Bread

This bread looks really beautiful and is easy to make. Take your favourite bread recipe (I used my basic stand by recipe: 500 g flour, 350 g water, 10 g salt, 10 g fresh yeast or 3 g instant) and divide all ingredients in half. Mix 250 g flour with 175 g water, 5 g yeast, and 5 g salt.Knead for 10 minutes and let rest in an oiled bowl, covered with a damp kitchen towel.

Mix the remaining 250 g flour with 175 g beet juice, 5 g yeast, and 5 g salt. Knead for 10 minutes as well and place in a second bowl. Let both bread doughs ferment for 1 hour, until the doughs have doubled in size. Divide each dough in two equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rectangle. All rectangles should have the same size. Place one beet dough rectangle over a regular dough rectangle, top with regular rectangle and then put the second beet coloured rectangle on top. Roll the dough up and place in an oiled loaf pan, seam side down. Ret sit at room temperature for another hour. Meanwhile preheat oven to 250°C. Bake the bread for 40.50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely before slicing. Enjoy!

This entry was submitted to Susan’s YeastSpotting.