Purple Sweet Potato Rolls

I just can't get over the color of these.….if you haven't noticed I'm still on a purple sweet potato kick.  That is how these purple sweet potato rolls were born.  I have a couple more ideas on how I want to cook or bake with them so stay tuned for that!  I am not a very experienced baker when it comes to working with yeast.  I always had this notion that yeast was hard and fussy to work with, but my thoughts have since changed on this!  Maybe I just got lucky with these?  I guess I will just have to experiment with more bread recipes to really test this out!

I realize that this may not be a pantry recipe for everyone, especially with flour and yeast being scarce right now.  We are lucky that we happened to stock up before things started to run out.  I go through a lot of flour, meaning I stock up on the big bags of flour from Costco and have a separate storage container full of it to refill my normal flour canister.  Is that weird?  I don't think it is, I think it's just being prepared!

  

I don't know about you, but I love the smell of yeasty bread when you are mixing and kneading it.  Kneading dough is also very satisfying, starting from something that is shaggy and then ending up with a nice looking dough ball.  Mine probably wasn't as smooth as it should have been, but I don't think it mattered in the end.  It only took about an hour for my dough to double in size.  Your rise time could be more or less depending on how cold or warm your house is.  A good trick if your house is too cold, turn only the oven light on and place your dough in the oven to rise.  I've done this before and it works like a charm.

Once your dough has doubled in size, you get to shape your rolls!  I ended up weighing my dough out so that the rolls would be even, but you don't have to.  You can make these smaller, larger, a different shape, or in a greased cake pan instead of on a sheet pan.  These rolls would make great breakfast sandwiches or even slider buns.  Let me know how your rolls turn out and what you end up doing with them!

Once the rolls are done baking you have to wait for them to cool down a little bit, don't eat them straight out of the oven as tempting as that may be!  Please do yourself a favor and serve this with some good butter.  I'm not generally picky when it comes to butter, but for these rolls you'll want to get some European butter.  You can thank me later.  These rolls have a subtle sweet potato flavor, but aren't as sweet as you would expect them to be.  The roll had a good chewy texture and were slightly crispy on the bottom.  It was hard to not eat them all!

I ended up only baking one tray of rolls and freezing the rest of the batch.  Since there is only two of us, I figured 24 roll would be a bit much for us.  We definitely could have eaten all the roll but it's all about moderation in my book.  Plus it will be nice to have some fresh rolls with minimal effort when we want them!  You do have to thaw the rolls overnight in the fridge and let them do their second rise, but that's the easy part in my opinion.

To freeze, all you have to do is after rolling them into balls after the first rise and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Freeze until they are frozen, then bag them up.  I covered my sheet pan with plastic wrap, but I don't think you have to.  It left some ice crystals on the top of the rolls where the plastic was touching the rolls.  You need to freeze them separately so that they won't stick together when you put them in a freezer bag.  I like to label my freezer bag with the contents, date, and any heating instructions so that I don't have to go searching for the recipe later on.

Purple Sweet Potato Rolls

Adapted from Good Life Eats

Makes approximately 24 rolls

Ingredients:

• 6 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for knading
• 2 packages (4 1/2tsp.) active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm buttermilk, heated to approx. 110℉ (see note 1 below)
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 1/12 cups purple sweet potato puree, at room temperature (see note 2 below)
• 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil, to grease your bowl

Directions:

MAKING THE DOUGH

1.  In a medium sized bowl or glass measuring cup, stir the yeast into the buttermilk.  Let it sit for 5 minutes or until you see bubbles starting to form.  This means that your yeast is alive and the bread will rise.
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer using the paddle attachment, mix the eggs, purple sweet potato puree, melted butter, sugar, and salt.  Add the yeast mixture to the mixer and mix to combine.
3. Add your flour, 1 cup at a time to the mixer.  You will need to switch to the dough hook after adding about 3 cups of flour.  Once you add the rest of the flour the dough should come together and not be too sticky.  If yours is too sticky, you may have to add a little more flour.  Mine had some flour at the bottom but I just ended up kneading that in.
4. Turn out dough into a well floured cutting board.  Continue to knead the dough, adding flour as necessary.  Mine ended up being somewhat sticky so I just added more flour as needed.  It took about 5-10 minutes of kneading to get the desired consistency.  Your dough should be smooth and elastic.
5. Oil a large bowl, making sure to oil the sides as well.  You do not want your dough to stick to the bowl.  Put your dough top side down into the bowl and gently turn your ball to get the top coated in oil, then flip it over and make sure the other side is coated as well. 
6. Cover your bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size.  You can do the finger poke test to see if your dough has risen enough.  Simply poke your dough with a floured finger and if the indentation stays then you know your dough is ready.

SHAPING THE DOUGH

1. Once your dough has done its first rise, you are ready to shape your rolls.  Divide the dough into 4 portions.  I just used a knife to cut the dough into quarters in the bowl.  
2. Working on a cutting board, take out quarter and make sure to cover the remaining dough again with the plastic wrap.  You shouldn't need any flour at this point, your dough so not be overly sticky especially with the oil from the bowl.  Gently shape the dough into a log and cut into 8 pieces, you can do less pieces if you want larger rolls.  I weighed out my dough balls to 2.50 ounces, but you don't have to weigh them out.  
3. Once you cut your pieces, roll them into balls.  I found that tucking any jagged pieces under the dough ball helped form a better shape.  I went around the ball and just kept tucking under and pinching the bottom together at the end.  Then to make sure they were round, I placed the roll on the cutting board and gently cupped and rolled the balls in a circular motion.  I know this sounds weird but it helped get a pretty uniform shape.
4. Place your dough balls on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap.  You will need at least 2-3 baking sheets depending on how big your rolls are.  This is where you can place them in another greased pan if you don't want to make them on a sheet tray as individual rolls.  Don't over crowd your pan as the rolls will rise some more.  This is also the step that you would want to freeze your rolls if you don't want to make them all.
5. Allow your rolls to rise for 20 -30 minutes before baking.  I allowed mine to rise 20 minutes before preheating the oven.

BAKING THE ROLLS

1. Preheat the oven to 400℉, once the oven is preheated place the rolls into the oven.
2. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops are brown and they are cooked through.  You will want to rotate your rolls half way through cooking if you cook more than one sheet at a time.
3. Let the rolls cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

NOTES

1. If you don't have buttermilk, you can add 1 Tbsp. of vinegar to your measuring cup and then fill to the 1 cup line with your milk.  Mix and let it sit for a few minutes before warming.
2. To make the purple sweet potato puree, you can find my boil method here or you can roast and then process them.  This time I roasted the sweet potatoes and then put them in the food processor.  I added water to get to the right consistency.  You don't want your puree to be too thick or too thin, I made mine to about canned pumpkin consistency.
3. If you freeze your rolls before you bake them, you will need to pull them out of the freezer the night before you want them and let them thaw overnight in the fridge.  I would put them on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap so that when you them out the next day for your second rise they will be all ready to go.  The second rise will take longer than your fresh rolls because the dough is starting out cold.  It should take about 45-60 minutes depending on the temperature of your house.  Once they are done rising bake the same as above.

Enjoy!