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Roasted Beetroot Sourdough
by:If I’m completely honest, I don’t really like beetroot (I love the green tops, though!). When I started my garden outside earlier this year (as many have done), I decided to try my hand at growing the plant not only for the greens but for the dark red taproot. My thinking was such: maybe if I grow them myself, I’ll enjoy their flavor more? As it turns out, I’ve been happily eating roasted beets in my salads for the better part of several months, all thanks to my garden. I tested this recipe with several different beet varieties, including Chioggia and bull’s blood straight from my garden, but also the standard red variety you’ll find at your local market. In the end, they all work very well in this recipe, and my preference is to choose a dark red variety. It’s fun explaining to friends and family why your bread is slightly reddish, and somehow fits in perfectly as Halloween approaches. But this roasted beetroot sourdough is terrific with any beet you have access to, and once my golden ones are ready to harvest, you can bet I’ll be making this bread with those, too. The easiest way to incorporate the roasted beets into your bread dough is to blend them into a coarse puree using your blender or food processor. I’ve found the finer you pulverize the taproot in testing, the less intense the red color in the final, baked loaf. So, if you’re going for a loaf of bread with just a tinge of red, blend the beets until they completely lose form and turn into a red liquid. If you want more redness, stop short and leave the beets, so they’re small chunks, about the size of rice kernels. I found that either way, the beets’ flavor and aroma still comes through in the end. You might be wondering why I add the blended beets at the end of mixing and not during bulk fermentation. As I mentioned in my post on adding mix-ins to bread dough, because we are blending the beets to such a fine degree, it’s not a problem to add them at the end of mixing. If we left the beets in larger pieces, I’d likely add them to the dough during bulk fermentation, where we could gently fold them into the dough.