When I came across this Hallowe’en Scream Swirl Bread!, I think I screamed a little. Just kidding, but my jaw did drop. All the colors swirled together was nothing I had ever seen before, and I had to try it. Then I read through the recipe and discovered it had ingredients I have never used in food like charcoal powder, matcha, and purple sweet potato puree. It just made me want to try it even more. I love new foods and food-related things! And Halloween is a time of year that’s filled with happy memories, so this bread went on my blog calendar. I have been planning this for a few months, and I’m so excited to finally make this recipe! There’s a lot to it, so this is a long and detailed post. It has successes, failures, and some troubleshooting. Let’s dive in!
This Halloween swirl milk bread, with it’s rather colourful and spooky shades, is made with vegetables, superfoods and natural food colouring!
The Ingredients
I happened to have a nearly full bag of bread flour on hand, so I didn’t have to shop for that. I also had butter, eggs, fine salt, sugar, instant dried yeast, turmeric, and black sesame seeds. In other words, I had most of the ingredients. I love it when that happens!
Milk was easy to find at my usual grocery store, but the rest had to be ordered. I bought matcha (green tea powder), food-grade charcoal powder, and purple sweet potato powder.
The sweet potato powder was a back-up in case I couldn’t find purple sweet potatoes locally. I ordered all this well in advance, and there were no purple sweet potatoes listed on Instacart at the time (it’s a good way to check stock and save a trip). I also had a bottle of ube extract as a backup for the powder. Sorta kidding—it was left over from making an Ube Cake Roll recipe, but I’m sure I could have worked it in if I had to.
Then I remembered Whole Foods. I haven’t ordered since they started charging a fee, but they had purple sweet potatoes. Yay! I bought four so I would have plenty in case I made a mistake. They were $1.99 a pound, $5.97 total.
The Process
This recipe only has five steps, but there’s a lot packed into each one. The instructions are divided up nicely, but the ingredients are not. They are listed in one column without any extra headings. Be careful, because flour and egg are listed twice—it’s easy to glance at the recipe and use the wrong amount.
I took a pen and divided the ingredients once I realized this. They are listed in the order used, and I ended up with four sections: roux, dough, colorings, and toppings.
Purple Sweet Potato Puree
The first step was making the purple sweet potato puree. I bought four purple sweet potatoes so I had plenty on hand if I made a mistake. Once I had them in hand, I went hunting for recipes and how-tos, but everything I found had extra seasonings. They sounded good, but I wanted plain or maybe a touch of salt for seasoning.
I was about to give up and follow a recipe but omit the seasonings when I found the aptly titled video How to make purple sweet potato puree. Making the puree was extremely similar to making mashed potatoes. Peel, cut into roughly 1-inch cubes, rinse, and boil in a small saucepan for 10 minutes or until fork tender.
I wanted to use the bright purple water to thin my puree, both for the flavor and color. I was able to do that by placing a colander over a heat-proof mixing bowl. Then I pureed the boiled potatoes in my blender and added water one tablespoon at a time. It took four tablespoons (1/4 cup) until I was happy with the consistency.
This Hallowe’en Scream Swirl Bread! only needs 75 grams of puree, so one sweet potato made more than enough (the one I used was 318 grams). I might freeze the extra, but I will find a recipe for the other three purple sweet potatoes.
My First Try at Bread Dough
I have made bread many times, but I’m not an expert. My favorite bread recipe is Easy Crusty French Bread, but this Hallowe’en Scream Swirl Bread! recipe is a lot different. It uses a tangzhong roux instead of water or milk.
Tangzhong roux was completely new to me, but I have made other types of roux many times. This style of roux uses flour, water, milk, butter, egg, and salt to make a paste. The paste is added to a dry mix of bread flour, sugar, and instant yeast. Knead the mixture on low in a stand mixer, and you will have bread dough after 10 minutes.
Or you’re supposed to have bread dough, but I really messed up. Despite spooning and leveling the flour carefully, my dough was the consistency of cake batter. Initially, I added 2 3/4 cups of flour, but I added the extra 1/4 cup immediately to make three cups total. I trusted the process and kneaded it for 10 minutes, with no real improvement.
The dough was still so slack that I decided to add more flour to make it come together. I have had this problem before, and more flour always worked. So I added 1/4 cup of flour and let the machine work for a few more minutes. I did this three times.
The dough looked much better, but it still looked like it needed a little more flour. I added three more tablespoons, allowing the machine to work between each. I periodically did the window pane test, but the dough kept breaking.
Nearly an hour later, I hit my limit and gave up. Then I had a eureka moment and realized my mistake. I was so focused on spooning and leveling the flour properly that I only added one measuring cupful of flour, not two. That was why the dough had the consistency of cake batter at first and why I had to add another cup of flour.
My Second Attempt at Bread Dough
I made sure to get an early start on my second attempt at the bread dough. It went very much like the first try, but this time was successful. I added the correct amount of flour (2 3/4 cups), mixed everything together, put the dough hook onto my stand mixer, and let it knead on low for 10 minutes.
The dough was slack, but far better than the previous day. I decided to add the extra 1/4 cup of flour just a few minutes after kneading began. I trusted the process and let the stand mixer knead for 10 minutes, but the dough didn’t come together and clear the sides of the bowl.
From what I have read about tangzhong roux bread, it’s quite wet, so I was more cautious about adding extra flour. This time I added leveled tablespoons. I added extra flour one tablespoon at a time and let my stand mixer knead until I was happy with the dough.
In the end, I added an extra nine tablespoons to the dough, or about 1/2 cup (about 3 1/2 cups total went into this bread). The final dough seemed a little more slack than the recipes I make regularly, but it passed the window pane test, and I moved on to adding the color.
Coloring the Dough
I had been looking forward to this part because I love color! I had made up the pastes while my bread kneaded on the first day. A little plastic wrap and a night in the fridge didn’t hurt them at all, but the matcha and turmeric seemed a little dryer than they were when freshly made. No biggie.
I grabbed my trusty kitchen scale and bench scraper to divide up the dough. There was a total of 872 grams, so each quarter/color weighed 218 grams. Kneading was easy, but I can see why people prefer a stand mixer or bread machine. It takes some effort to continuously knead for almost half an hour.
I wore plastic gloves while kneading all four colors because the purple sweet potato stained my hands a little when I chopped them up. The gloves didn’t interfere at all, but they were stained yellow after kneading in the turmeric. You do not want to do that with bare hands!
Creating the Loaf
It was time to roll out the layers now that the colors were evenly distributed throughout the dough. I used a silicone work mat that has measuring marks on one corner to get as close to 12″x6″ as possible. It kept shrinking, but an extra pass with my rolling pin took care of it.
I gave them a little squish together and rolled them up long side to long side so I had a roughly 12-inch long loaf. The recipe doesn’t say to wet the end and pinch it together, so I skipped that and placed the roll seam side down in the oiled 13-inch X 5-inch loaf pan. Lastly, I brushed the dough with egg wash and sprinkled on the black sesame seeds.
Baking
I placed my sesame seed-encrusted, plastic-covered loaf into my microwave to rise while the oven preheated. Don’t worry, the microwave wasn’t on! It makes a nice slightly warmer area for dough to rise and keeps it out of the way.
Then I scanned the recipe and realized there was a baking time but no temperature. Aaaargh! I ran to my laptop and looked up bread recipes that used tangzhong roux and a similar amount of flour.
It took a little refinement of my search terms before I found a helpful Reddit post that linked to a recipe for Japanese Milk Bread on the King Arthur blog. Their milk bread recipe was similar to this recipe and their bread was baked at 350℉ for 30-35 minutes. The recipe added another very helpful tip that the bread would be done when it reached an internal temperature of 190℉.
My search took about 20 minutes, and I still hadn’t preheated the oven. Waiting for the oven to preheat gave the dough an extra 10 minutes to rise. I stuck a thermometer probe into the middle of the loaf and gave it 30 minutes to bake.
The internal temperature was 176℉ after half an hour. I added another five minutes, but the thermometer beeped after 2:30. My bread was ready!
Fixing the Sesame Seeds
I used flour on the work mat when I rolled out the dough, so they all had white blotches including the black dough. My loaf of Hallowe’en Scream Swirl Bread! rose a little lopsided, and it had a big strip of white along one side.
Fixing my lopsided bread was quick and easy. I made more egg wash, brushed it over the flour, and sprinkled on more black sesame seeds. Then I put the bread back into my oven for five minutes, checked, and added another two minutes. My bread came out looking much less lopsided, but the egg wash gave it a yellow tinge.
Timing
This recipe listed 45 minutes to prep, 1 hour 30 minutes to rise, 35 minutes to cook, which totals 3 hours 30 minutes. It also list 4 minutes to cool in the pan in Step 5, but I don’t think that’s included. It would bring the total time to 3 housr 54 minutes. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 9 minutes to peel and cube a purple sweet potato
- 10 minutes to boil
- 4 minutes to drain and puree
- 11 minutes to make the tangzhong roux
- 34 minutes to make the bread dough
- 30 minutes to divide, add colors, and wrap
- 45 minutes for the first rise
- 15 minutes to roll out the dough, make the loaf, and add sesame seeds
- 30 minutes for the second rise
- 38 minutes to bake
- 4 minutes to cool in the tin
- 3 hours 57 minutes total
