How to prevent brillant pink raw bread dough from cooking up to yellow?
I added some cooked beets to a bread recipe. The result was a lovely pink dough:
After cooking, the rolls were yellow on the inside with some of the pink still visible in the crust:
Why? Any way to over come the color change?
Best Answer
It appears that the pH of your bread changed during baking. Beets are red because of their anthocyanins. According to Wikipedia:
Anthocyanins can be used as pH indicators because their color changes with pH; they are pink in acidic solutions (pH < 7), purple in neutral solutions (pH ~ 7), greenish-yellow in alkaline solutions (pH > 7), and colourless in very alkaline solutions, where the pigment is completely reduced.[5]
You would have to post your recipe or analyze it yourself to determine what is alkalizing your dough, perhaps baking soda? Changing your recipe to make it more acidic may change the texture of your bread. You could look for another recipe that uses acidic ingredients, such as butter milk that might off set the color change. The pink looks very pretty though.
Pictures about "How to prevent brillant pink raw bread dough from cooking up to yellow?"
Can I refrigerate bread dough after it has risen?
Yes, risen dough CAN be placed in a refrigerator. Putting risen dough in the fridge is a common practice of home and professional bakers alike. Since yeast is more active when it's warm, putting yeasted dough in a refrigerator or chilling it slows the yeast's activity, which causes dough to rise at a slower rate.Can I put undercooked bread back in the oven?
In most situations, an undercooked loaf of bread can be fixed by returning it to the oven for a few more minutes. This is true for loaves where the outside of your bread may look fully set, but the inside of the bread is still gummy. Place the loaf back in a preheated oven at 350\xb0 F for 10-20 minutes.What happens if bread dough is too wet?
Too much water in bread dough will result in a dense, flat loaf. Too much water in bread dough interferes with the gluten structure, and the loaf will not be able to hold its shape. If the yeast in your bread dough dies because of overhydration, the dough will not be able to rise adequately.Can I bake dough straight from the fridge?
Yes, you can bake dough straight from the refrigerator \u2013 it does not need to come to room temperature. The dough has no problems from being baked cold and will bake evenly when baked in a very hot oven. I've baked many loaves straight from the fridge with great results, and haven't noticed any problems.What's that??? Gummy, raw dough, under-baked or bread not rising???
More answers regarding how to prevent brillant pink raw bread dough from cooking up to yellow?
Answer 2
Adding a small amount (0.2% of dough) of ascorbic or citric acid to the dough will help stabilize the red/pink color. MiMintzer's answer explains why.
Answer 3
You will have to use food coloring if you want colored dough.
There are multiple problems with using fruit to color other food. First, the concentration is seldom high enough to get a noticeable color without using large amounts of the fruit, which would change the recipe texture if simply added. In this case, you were lucky to want the fruit there in the first place.
But the other problem is that these colors are not chemically stable. They can be destroyed by temperature, or by pH changes, as MiMintzer pointed out. But I wouldn't go messing with the pH of your dough. If you change it sufficiently to get the color to change, you will 1) change the leavening totally (probably get no leavening), and 2) change the taste a lot, so you end up with either sour bread or soap tasting bread. If what you are making is a yeast bread and not a quickbread, you'll still mess up with the yeast and therefore get bad leavening.
Beside the pH changes, you'll also get some change due to the different texture. The small amounts of dye sufficient to color a piece of solid dough will seem lighter after baking, when you're seeing a foam instead of a solid block. This won't account for the large difference in your pictures, but could contribute.
Bottom line: if you want pink bread, you have to color it with a real dye. Accidental colorations from berries are practically impossible to control.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Andy Kuzma, Flora Westbrook, Flora Westbrook, Karolina Grabowska