For Valentine's Day dinner, I had the great idea of having breakfast for dinner. I didn't get my bread baked in time, so instead we had pizza last night and made this Red Beet Brioche French Toast for breakfast today instead.
My inspiration for Red Beet Brioche came from my Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day cookbook and the artisanbreadinfive.com blog. On the blog, they posted about a lovely heart shaped beet bread loaf using the Red Beet Rolls recipe in the book. This stuck with me and I bought beets so I could do it. Then the though of red french toast popped in my head. The problem was that the Red Beet Roll recipe is a savory recipe with onions in it. So, I decided to adapt it to a brioche recipe and see what happened. I used the Pumpkin Pie Brioche recipe and substituted beet pureé for the pumpkin and left out all the spices. I had great success and the bread has such a lovely color.
Red Beet Brioche
adapted from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day
3 cups white whole wheat flour
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
handful or two of flaxseed
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (or 2 packets)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (use the reserved beet water)
4 large eggs
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup neutral flavored oil, or unsalted butter, melted (I used olive oil and it worked great)
4-5 red beets, peeled, chopped, boiled and puréed.
First, boil the beets until soft. Pureé the beets and then reserve the red tinted water to use in the dough.

Then, mix the flours, flaxseed, yeast and salt in a large bowl or dough bin. In a separate bowl, whisk together the beet pureé, eggs, water, honey and oil.

Then mix it all together until all the flour is integrated. Put the top on the dough bucket loosely (or cover the bowl with plastic wrap) and put it in a warm place to let it rise for 2 hours (or until it doubles in size). At this point, you can pop this in your fridge for up to 5 days.
When you are ready to use the dough, pull off about a grapefruit sized chunk of dough and shape it for your pan of choice. I used a small bread pan like this:

This photo shows the bread after the second rise. I used the dough before refrigeration, so it only need about 30 minutes to crest above the top of the pan. If you are using the dough refrigerated, then let it rise for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, covered loosely with plastic wrap.

Then bake at 350º for 45-50 minutes depending on the size of the loaf. The loaf is done when it is medium brown and firm. Remove the loaf from the pan and allow it to cool on a cooling rack.

Now, the french toast part. I mixed together 2 eggs, about 3/4 cup of milk (I don't usually measure), and a generous splash of vanilla. Mix it in a flat dish and then put in slices of bread to soak. Melt butter in a skillet and fry on both sides until golden.

You'll end up with lovely pink and brown french toast. Which we promptly topped with butter, blueberries and syrup. Yum!

Enjoy!!






































