Steps

• Cut the beetroot into pieces and place it in the hand blender’s glass.

  Add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and blend until you get a puree.

  Pour the refreshed and active sourdough into a large bowl.

  👉 I kneaded by hand, but you can use a stand mixer (of course, in this case, the bowl will be the mixer bowl).

  Pour the beetroot puree into the sourdough and mix.

• Pour the water.

  👉 For the water, it’s useful to use the glass where the beetroot was blended to recover residue.

  Add the flour.

  Knead until you obtain a well-combined dough.

  👉 Knead gently; the dough is soft and slightly sticky. It may be helpful to oil or flour your hands during kneading. In any case, after obtaining the dough ball, it’s good to oil the bowl and the dough’s surface (a couple of teaspoons of oil are enough).

• Place the bowl in a sheltered place (in the turned-off oven or inside the microwave).

  During the first two hours of rising, it’s useful to do two or three rounds of folds (every 30 minutes).

  

• Let the dough rise at room temperature for a few hours until it has almost doubled.

  Then you can proceed to shape the buns. Or you can put the dough in the fridge for a few hours (to let it mature or simply because it’s evening and you want to bake the buns the next day).

  I put it in the fridge for 8 hours, and here’s the dough just taken out of the fridge:

  (Small note: in the photos the pink color of the dough seems to vary but these are differences due to ambient light, photos taken during the day near the window and those taken in the evening in my kitchen produced different shades. I must say, pink and red colors are a bit tricky, it can also happen when photographing with different devices).

  

• Divide the dough into 9-10 buns (I made 9 about 3.5 oz each).

  Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

  Brush the buns with a little milk and let them rise for about 1 hour (2 hours if the dough is cold from the fridge).

  Cover the buns with a non-contact lid – a tray or container with high edges will do – or put the tray in the turned-off oven or microwave.

• Bake the buns at 374°F for about 25 minutes.

  ☝ Remember not to exceed 392°F.

  As you can clearly see from the following photo, the browning that usually looks good on regular bread, on these pink buns creates a color contrast not exactly magazine-worthy, so I recommend monitoring the baking a bit better than I did 😃 or making slightly smaller buns (10-11 buns instead of 9) to decrease the baking time by a few minutes.

  

• In any case, looking at them from the right side… they’re beautiful! 🤩

  Both outside,

  

• and inside:

  

• Beetroot buns are soft buns, with a tender and slightly sweet crumb.

  They are excellent also toasted, both for breakfast with butter and jam, and at meals as crunchy bread.

  And they can be used as hamburger buns.

  

• Now, as promised in the introduction, I’ll show you two photos of the first version of beetroot buns, the one without the addition of two teaspoons of lemon juice.

  Before baking, the dough is light pink, after baking the pink has disappeared and turned into a… dark golden bread color. 😃