200g sweet potato, peeled, diced
100ml water
700g baker’s flour
100g wholemeal flour
100g lupin flour
1/2 tsp dry yeast
450ml lukewarm water
1 tbsp salt flakes
1/2 cup flaked almonds, plus extra for the top
Olive oil, for hands
The night before:
Add sweet potato and 100ml water to a microwavable container, microwave on high for 6 minutes (turning every couple of minutes) or until fully tender.
Puree sweet potato and water.
Combine flours in a large wide-mouth bowl.
Add yeast to 450ml lukewarm water, stir.
Slowly and while stirring with knife, add water to flour mixture.
Add puree, salt and almonds.
Combine well with hands. Mixture will be wet and sticky.
Holding onto the mixture, fold it in half 3 times.
Oil hands and roll mixture into a large ball. Put back in bowl and cover with cling wrap .
Leave overnight (or 10 hours minimum).
The morning of:
Flour hands and take bread out of bowl, fold in half once, then stretch out the dough to form a long, skinny oval.
Add flaked almonds.
Let rest for an hour or until it has doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius and place a metal bowl/tray in the bottom of the oven.
Spritz bread with water, place bread in the oven and pour a cup of water onto the bowl/tray to create steam.
Cook for 35 minutes.
Place on wire rack and allow to cool for one hour before cutting.
Tips and ideas:
- Sweet potato can be pureed and frozen for over a month. I have a 5 month old who will start eating lots of pureed veggies soon, so I am excited to see what other combinations I can come up with.
- As there are no preservatives, the bread only stays fresh for the day. It does freeze really well though, so I just cut it up and always have some in the freezer.
- The morning of, you can allow it to rest for longer if you need to. It will just continue to spread out wider so the bread will be thinner (which is what happened in the picture above – we went to the park instead!). The longest I have left it is 5 hours.
- The spritzing of water and adding water to the metal bowl/tray gives the bread it’s crunchy crust. I have forgotten this step before, and although the bread was nice, it didn’t have a hard crust.
- It is very rare that I wait the full hour before cutting the bread. Apparently, it allows the crust to crunch up better and (I think) something happens with the enzymes (maybe?) in the bread that actually make it easier to digest if you leave it to cool. But I just can’t wait!
- If you don’t want to use sweet potato, replace it with another puree. If you don’t want any puree, just remove the puree component and add an extra 200ml of water.