Beetroot bread

Today´s Swedish word: rosa. Means pink.

I have been lazy with my blogging but I will get back to it now. One of the many things I haven´t written about yet is the beetroot bread I made for the dissertation party in December. My task was to make bread for 80 people and I decided early to make the kind where you put many smaller buns together and when they rise and bake they stick to each other. I figured it would look almost like a molecule and since my friend´s dissertation was in chemistry that would be perfect. I also thought it would be cool to colour some of the bread with beetroot, so I did.

Why I didn´t take a photo of the "break-bread" I don´t remember but I also made a very large pleated bread where you hopefully can see the different colours. All the bread was devoured almost immediately by the guests and was just, just enough... eeek. But no one was hungry after that party.

The recipe is from a basic cookbook, Bonniers kokbok which I got from my aunt some years ago. At first I didn´t think I needed it but as it turned out it is our absolute favourite. I doubled the recipe and added sunflower seeds and grated beetroot in one of the two batches. The recipe called for wheat flour but I used rågsikt which is a mix of wheat and fine rye.

Beetroot bread
50 rolls
100 grams fresh yeast
1200 ml tepid water (37C)
100 ml oil
1.5 tbsp salt
400-600 ml sunflower seeds
2000 grams wheat flour
2 large beetroots, finely grated

Dissolve the yeast in some of the water, then add the rest of the water and the oil. Add salt, sunflower seeds and the greated beetroot, then almost all the flour (save 200-300 ml for the finish). Work the dough on a floured surface until smooth, this will give you plenty of arm muscle exercise since the dough is rather large and heavy. You can also use a machine if you have one.
Put the dough in a large bowl, cover with a kitchen cloth and let it rise for 45 minutes.
Shape 50 round rolls of the dough and let them rise again under a cloth on the baking sheet for another 30 minutes. If you want a large "breaking bread" you put them close to each other so they stick together.

Bake in very hot oven (250C) in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes or until the rolls are nice and golden brown. But mostly they will be pink on the outside (bot sorry, not on the inside.)