Sweet Potato Bread Recipe

It’s a sad truth but a lot of kitchen gadgets get used a lot at first and then start to gather dust in a corner of the worktop (a bit like a grown up version of Toy Story, if they came alive when you weren’t looking). I want to try and make the most out of my breadmaker this year and this is my first step.

This sweet potato bread recipe creates a nice tear and share loaf that goes well with soup, with cheese or is just as lovely toasted. It’s a bit more effort than the tradition breadmaker recipe as you’re only using the dough cycle but it does produce a pretty special bread.

You need:

For the dough:
1 cup of tepid water
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp honey
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups of strong white bread flour
1 tsp yeast

For the filling:
1 1/2 sweet potatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 red onion
1 tsp red pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne chilli powder

1. Add the ingredients to the breadmaker in the order listed above and set it off on the dough setting. Usually this takes about an hour and a half.

2. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into chunks. Put them in a pan of water and bring to the boil, cook for about 2o mins until cooked through and then mash.

3. Finely chop the onion and pepper.

4. Add the oil to a frying pan over a low heat, add the onion and cook until soft.

5. Add the cayenne and the pepper and cook for another minute or so.

6. Turn off the heat and add the sweet potato mash and mix thoroughly and leave to cool.

7. Once the breadmaker cycle has finished transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead in the sweet potato mixture. Beware: this is messy and the dough gets quite sticky – add a bit more flour if you need to but only enough to make it manageable, you don’t want to dry it out.

8. Oil a baking tray and press the dough out onto it. Cover it with some oiled clingfilm but don’t wrap the clingfilm round the tin, the dough needs to rise. Now leave the dough somewhere warmish until it has doubled in size. Rumour has it that the slower the prove, the better the flavour. This took about 45 minutes to rise for me in my average temperature kitchen – no airing cupboards or special proving drawers required!

9. At this point I set the oven to preheat while the dough proved to 200 degrees .

10. Remove the clingfilm and put the dough into the oven for 25 minutes – if your oven cooks slower or faster than normal keep an eye on it after 15 minutes. It’ll be golden brown on top when it’s ready.

11. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.