Kitchenthoughts: an easy red yeast dough without using artifical coulouring

This time I don’t have a real recipe for you, more an idea for a recipe variation: red colored yeast dough!

And you can achieve it without the help of the chemistry industry. Which is why I am not using red food coloring but instead: Beetroot Juice!

How exactly do you achieve that?

Just switch the liquids in a recipe with 2/3 of beet root juice (so if the recipe says for example use 150 ml milk, then you will use 100 ml beet root juice and 50 ml milk – and don’t forget to heat the mixture up to activate the yeast) and you will get a vibrant pink dough. And no I did not mess with the color in the picture while editing it. That is the real color of the dough! It will darken during baking and the end result will be more a muted dark red.

So far I tried this method on pizza and doughnuts and each time I could not find a change in the taste. If you are worried though, you could add 1 extra Tablespoon of sugar to your dough. That should hide any “beet root taste”.

If you choose a ratio of 1 juice : 2 liquid, you would get more of a rose colored dough. That could be really pretty for valentines day. Rose yeast rolls with marzipan? I might consider that.

And what could you do with the rest of the beet root juice?

Well luckily it is only sold in small portions and I personally like the mixture of 1/3 beet root juice + 1/3 grape juice + 1/3 sparkling water. Or you could make a really red sauce or a tomato root beet soup. Do you have any more ideas?