charcoal sourdough bread Archives | My Daily Sourdough Bread

Winter is perfect time to slow our lives down, to set up some goals, to decrease all the hype , to take well deserved rest, and get grounded again for new adventures. But sometimes, the winter gets too greyish, monotonous, and blues-y. It's when there might be no Sun for weeks and when all the green turns into pale memory and snow covers what might have survived the sharp cold.

Then, I know, it's time to bring some joy and twists into bread baking. Today, we are going to talk about how to color your dough with natural colors.

Before we dive into colors, I would like to point out some tips and directions to consider in order to avoid surprises:

1. There are many ways of making your bread colorful. The most common ones I go for are:
- liquid (fresh vegetable or fruit juice)
- powder (dry spices and herbs or dried vegetable and fruit parts)
- pureé (mashed vegetables or fruits)
There are some other ways, like concentrated vegetable or fruit syrups or as @table_fable suggested on instagram adding (powder or herb) infused oils to the dough.

2. Color is also a flavor.
Keep in mind that with larger doses (of powder or liquid) you might reach the inedible limit very fast - imagine putting too much cocoa, cinnamon or charcoal powder into the dough. I have experienced this issue with using too much fresh red cabagge juice. The color was beautifully pink, but the taste was very strong - only for real red cabagge lovers (don't say I didn't warn you :)). One thing to consider is also the use of the final product - don't use fruit teas to color the dough, if you know you're going to eat the bread with savory.

3. Get most of the food coloring by examining it.
If you juice your vegetables, you will notice that some vegetable juices often turn brown very quickly - the juice oxidizes. There is no difference when adding the juice to the dough. The most common color intensity loss will occur with spinach, carrot, parsley, and beetroot juice. The solution to this is adding some acidic substance to the juice, like lemon juice, buttermilk or vinegar.

Also, if not sure what the juice color intensity will be in the dough, check how translucent the liquid looks. The more transparent the liquid, the less intensive the color in the final product.

Note: this post will be regularly updated with new experiments and findings about dough coloring. Feel free to join the fun here on or my Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Yellow

- turmeric powder (for the bread on the photo below I put 1 tsp per 250 g of flour) or turmeric juice
- safrron
- egg yolks (applicable for sweet doughs)

Coloured with turmeric powder.

Orange

- carrot juice or powder
- pumpkin juice or pureé (see the recipe here)
- paprika powder

Left coloured with pumpkin puree, right coloured with fresh carrots juice.

Red

- hibiscus
- beetroot juice or powder

Pink

- raspberries
- red cabbage juice (experiment with cooked cabbage juice or adding a little bit of baking soda for blue)
- purple potato

Coloured with fresh red cabagge juice.

Purple

- purple carrots
- blueberries
- purple potatoes
- walnuts (walnuts contain tannins which give the dough greyish-purple-lavender hue)

Coloured with fresh purple carrots juice.

Green

- spinach
- matcha powder
- vegetable chlorophyll
- algae like spirulina and chlorella powder

Coloured with fresh spinach juice.

Blue

This is the only color I haven't tried experimenting with. One of the reasons might be that blue isn't really the color you would connect to food and eating (unicorn cakes don't count!). In food psychology, blue is considered as appetite suppressant and it is therefore very advisable to use blue at meals when wanting to lose weight (using blue plates for example). In nature, blue food is very rare, actually, I don't remember any at the moment (except for some flowers and I don't consider blueberries blue :)).

I'm planning to experiment with blue in next weeks. Wish me luck!

Brown (rye malt, cacao)

- rye/barley malt (see the recipe here)
- cocoa powder
- cinnamon
- coffee

You can check a great tutorial for zebra effect (right photo below) on this link. Try experimenting with different color combinations, it's fun.

Coloured with cacao powder.

Coloured with rye malt.

Black / grey

Black is, same as blue, relatively unappealing color when it comes to food. My experience with sharing black bread is doubt mixed with curiosity at first, and excitement after trying it.

- activated charcoal powder (see the photo below, get the recipe here)
- squid ink
- large quantities of raw cocoa powder

Coloured with charcoal powder.

Have you tried bread coloring?
What is your favorite color?
What is your best experience and best tip for getting intense colors?

I would love to hear from you, let me know in a comment below, I'm looking forward! :)

The thing I like the most in sourdough baking is that every bread I make is different. Each bread holds its own story and each also reflects the energy I put in it. This energy can be seen through the decisiveness of the score, the stability of dough's shape and its power to rise fully by seeing, feeling, and choosing the right moment to bake it.

My last sourdough breads have been inspired by a great bread story teller Malin Elmlid, the author of the Bread Exchange book. Charcoal powder sourdough bread brings an interesting twist to our daily food color palette and it's a perfect match with colorful jams and vibrant vegetables like tomatoes and radishes. And avocados!

Edible activated charcoal powder is otherwise well known for binding unwanted toxins of all kinds in our body and it is great when traveling and not being sure about the quality of the food.

I experimented with the quantity of the charcoal powder and the hydration level of the dough and both resulted in interesting outcomes and stories to be heard once again.

Charcoal sourdough bread
Yields: one big loaf

Baking schedule:
This bread was mixed in the evening, left to rise for 3 hours at the room temperature, shaped and then put in the fridge for 17 hours. It was baked in the afternoon of the following day.

Ingredients:
400 g white wheat flour
300 g water (75 % hydration level)
100 g active rye or white wheat sourdough starter (100% hydration) - I fed it in the morning before mixing the dough
8 g fine sea salt
1 teaspoon charcoal powder

Instructions:

1. In the evening (day before baking), first dissolve 1 teaspoon of charcoal powder in 300 g of water. Add 100 g of sourdough starter and mix by hand. Next, add 400 of flour and mix all ingredients until they come together. Cover the bowl with the kitchen cloth and let the dough rest for 1 hour. This rest is called autolyse. Observe how the dough becomes more extensible after the rest. Letting your dough to rest after mixing it is a great option if you don't know how much water your flour absorbs. You can start with less water, let the dough rest and then see if you need to add more water.

2. After 1 hour, you will notice the dough has relaxed a little bit. Add 8 g of salt and knead the dough for 5 minutes so it becomes stretchy.

3. Leave the dough in the bowl for another 3 hours at the room temperature (if it's too cold, you might put the bowl in a slightly warm oven). Cover the bowl with a kitchen cloth to prevent the surface of the dough from drying out. In the meantime prepare the rising basket and flour it well. I lined my rising basket with a kitchen cloth and floured it with whole grain rye flour and white wheat flour.

4. After 3 hours, the dough should look very alive, slightly risen, and stretchy. You might even see the bubbles on the dough surface. Take the dough out on a lightly floured working surface. Pinch the ends of the dough together in the middle, turn the dough upside down and let it rest for 10-15 minutes so that the final shaping will be easier as the gluten will relax.

5. To shape the bread, turn it upside down, stretch a little bit with your fingers and then fold the bottom part over the center, left side over the center, right side over the center and also the upper side over the center. Transfer the dough to the rising basket fold-side up. Sprinkle some more flour on the top and cover it with the rest of the kitchen cloth. Put the basket in the fridge. Let it ferment until the volume of the dough has visibly increased (at least by a third) and when the indent you make with your finger springs back slowly and not all the way up.

6. The photo below shows how the dough looked like after 17 hours in the fridge. The baking schedule can be easily modified to fit your schedule, depending on when you would like to bake the bread. If you would like to bake it in the morning, add more sourdough starter and leave the dough at the room temperature longer before and after shaping. Or you can also let it rise overnight in the fridge and take it out in the morning and let it at the room temperature to fully ferment.

Fully proofed charcoal sourdough bread ready to be put in the oven.

7. At least 30 minutes before baking preheat your oven to the maximum temperature of your oven along with dutch oven or a baking stone. I used dutch oven.

8. When the oven is preheated, take the loaf out of the rising basket and transfer it to dutch oven. Score the loaf and put your dutch oven into oven.

9. Bake the loaf for 20 minutes with the lid on at 240°C/465F°F and 20-25 minutes with lid off at 230°C/445°F and until bread gets nice golden color. Cool on a cooling rack before cutting for at least 1 hour.

The crumb color of this bread is exceptional and its taste is not affected by the charcoal. If I had to choose, I would go for the middle path - half of the tablespoon of the charcoal powder. What you may experience with larger quantities of the charcoal powder is that it won't dissolve well and you would feel it in every bite. To dissolve the powder you can use smaller quantities of alcohol like rum or vodka (well, the quantities are not limited with the slice of this bread between the fingers ...).

Left: 1 teaspoon of charcoal powder and 70% hydration. Right: 1 tablespoon of charcoal powder and 75% hydration.

Have you been experiencing with different colors of the bread crumb? What is your favorite?

Tag Archives: charcoal sourdough bread

Homebaker’s guide to natural bread coloring

Charcoal powder sourdough bread