Recipe: Ubi / Ube (Purple Yam) Bread

When I first joined the Foodbuzz community, one of the first recipes I was and was enamoured with was Angie's Ubi Purple Yam Two-Tone Bread.



I set out to search for Ubi powder, and found it shortly after while we were antiquing on Main Street! ...We wandered into a Philipino grocery store where the owner / lady helped us with a smile. Aside from the Ubi powder, we also picked up a variety of sauces. ...we tried the sauces first (that night actually) and were surprised to find that they were all very sweet - much like Philipino "ketchup", we declared. We had been expecting fiery, spicy sauce, so the sweetness was a little bit of a surprise.

Fast forward a couple weeks - I had forgotten about the ubi powder, but wanted to make a sweet bread. My mind went back to that fantastic photo of the dramatic purple streak through the white bread, and also the curiousity of what Angie calls a Tangzhong starter.

The Tangzhong starter utilizes a concept called starch gelatinization. It makes sense that as the water and flour are stirred and heated up over medium heat, that the starch, an insoluble polysaccharide breaks down into simpler sugars. The resulting hydrogen bonding sites are then able to pick up more water, and thus, improve the texture and moisture content of bread. (My Food Tech instructors would be so proud!)




While I was weighing out and preparing the bread dough, I noted the weights. I also made some changes and suggestions below.

Ingredients - Purple Dough
3/4 c all purpose flour (the original recipe calls for bread dough, but Canadian flour is harder / has more gluten, so I used that instead)
3T Ubi powder
2T + 2t white sugar
1/2t salt (I used Kosher salt)
1/2t instant dry yeast
2T Tangzhong starter (prepared from approximately 1/2 c flour + 1 c water)
1/4 c warm milk
1T + 1t egg, well beaten
2T butter, melted

Ingredients - Light Dough
1 c all purpose flour
2T + 2t white sugar
1/2t salt
1/2t instant dry yeast
2T Tangzhong starter
1/4 c warm milk
1T + 1t egg, well beaten
2T butter, melted

The recipe instructs users to prepare the dough separately, but next time, I'd prepare the doughs (minus yam powder) together, then divide them in two and knead in the yam powder. When I prepared the purple dough, I was worried that the yam powder wouldn't dissolve and make the bread grainy (see photos above). However, after baking, the yam provided a slight sweetness, and there was no graininess.

I'm looking forward to trying out the starch gelatinization concept in other applications. The bread was noticeably more moist than other breads, even a day later. I've been snacking on it here and there and it is tasty!