One of the many interests I’ve taken a liking to over my culinary career is fermentation - kombucha, vegetables, hot sauces, honey, fruits, and, since becoming well-acquainted with spending my days at home, I’ve overcome my fear of sourdough! What kept me dreading even attempting this are the variables, length, and hand-mixing that goes into making a simple loaf. Hours-even days of fermentation and labor could lead to a sourdough with a fault. But my eagerness to do something…ANYTHING in the kitchen as well as a chance scroll on Palz Trading Zone (Formerly, Bunz… how fitting) that led me to acquire a sourdough starter (now named Clint Yeastwood) has led me here on my 5th loaf, daringly incorporating my true love - tea.

I absolutely love incorporating tea into recipes, but can see how tiring it can be watching the same trends in tea recipes recycling itself. However, I came across a beautiful picture on Instagram of a sourdough loaf. Its cross section revealed a bold beautiful blueish purple that I could not take my eyes from. I knew I had to give it a crack. As sourdough is acidic, I was curious to see how butterfly pea flower would react overtime with the flow fermentation process. I wish I’d taken before photos to show you the difference. I’ll certainly update this with my second attempt. Aside from the bread’s unique and beautiful instagram worthy colour, the flowers give off a bright, vegetal savouriness, and it’s definitely worth making.

I ate a slice piled high with thyme lemon chèvre, and a herbed white bean and snap pea salad. Eating with vegetables really reinforced the spring pea taste the butterfly pea flowers put forth in the sourdough. So delicious.

Here are the measurements, and rough guide I’ve used for this dough:

10g Butterfly Pea Flowers (2%)
300g Water (60%)
100g Levain (20%)
500g All Purpose Flour, Unbleached (100%)
8g Salt (1.6%)
100g Poppy Seeds

I’ve added baker’s percentage for people who are serious about making sourdough. If you’d like to read more about baker’s percentage, click here.

This recipe is loosely based on the country sourdough recipe in Tartine Bread. It’s a very useful and thorough guide for sourdough bread baking and more.

Directions:

In a food processor or spice grinder, process butterfly pea flowers until fine powder. This is optional. You may leave the butterfly pea flowers whole, but seeing the green parts of the flour in your purple bread might make it unpleasant looking and harder to detect whether your bread has expired.

Bring 300g water to a boil and add the butterfly pea flowers. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the water is a dark blue. Let cool well below 120°F before you begin to mix dough.

Add BPF water, levain, and all purpose flour to the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on speed 1 for 5 minutes. Let rest (autolyse) for 20 minutes. Add salt, and mix on speed 2 for 8-10 minutes, or until gluten is developed.

Cover dough, and let sit out at room temperature for 4 hours, turning the dough over itself every 45 minutes to further develop gluten. Bulk ferment in the fridge for 12-14 hours (I let it rest overnight).

Add poppy seeds to a bin big enough to fit your shaped sourdough. Take the dough out of the fridge, and final shape into a round, coat your bread in poppy seeds, and place into your floured bread basket. cover and final proof until dough has nearly doubled in size, about 3-4 hours**.

Preheat your oven to 500°F with a dutch oven inside. Take dutch oven out and carefully place your proved sourdough into it. Score the top of your bread. Place the lid back on and put back into the oven. Immediately turn oven down to 450°F and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the lid from the dutch oven and bake for another 30-40 minutes, or until the bread’s crust has deeply browned, and your bread has reached an internal temperature of 208°F.

**My apartment kitchen is very very cold, so your results for your dough might vary from mine! Sourdough is tricky. Check your dough from time to time to see how it behaves.

Let cool. Slice. Ooh and ahh at the beautiful colour. Eat.

Click here to get your hands on some Butterfly Pea Flower Tea!