Beetroot Amaretto Rolls - NFOB

                      

     Here's another top recipe from the National Festival of Breads. The finalists recipes are all show-stoppers and winners to make it to the contest held in Manhattan by the Kansas Wheat Commission. This recipe, by Shauna Havey of Utah won the People's Choice Award. Those votes were by Facebook shares and likes during the week before the contest. 
     The sponsor for the People's Choice Award was John Deere. Other major sponsors, besides the Kansas Wheat Commission, were Red Star Yeast and King Arthur Flour. 

     The contestants create original recipes that not only taste good, they are beautiful and unique. One of the fun parts is seeing how they use different ingredients. But that's also one of the hard parts as some of these things are not sold in my local grocery store. So I shopped in a bigger store in a bigger town for fresh beets and almond paste. Luckily there is enough of each of those now stored in my freezer for 2 more preparations of this recipe. And I'll admit, I did a couple of substitutions - I used whole milk instead of almond milk (yea, dairy producers) and bread flour for the almond flour in the filling. I didn't have turbinado sugar, so I used the Swedish pearl sugar left from a previous NFOB recipe I tried. Turbinado sugar is defined as a lighter, less refined brown sugar so my product didn't have the molasses hint that would come from Turbinado sugar. 
    I was surprised at how easy these rolls were to shape. Putting the filled and rolled dough in the freezer for 10 minutes seemed to make them easier to work with when twisting into the wreath form. I did weigh the dough when dividing it so the rolls were a uniform size. Each roll was 2.3 oz and somehow I got 13 instead of 12! 

BEETROOT AMARETTO ROLLS  

photo from National Festival
of Breads June 2019

Filling

• 2 medium fresh beets
• 1/3 cup (3.5 ounces) almond paste
• 2 tablespoons KING ARTHUR® Almond Flour
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg white
• ¼ cup finely chopped sliced almonds, divided

Dough

• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (110°F – 115°F)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 (¼ ounce) package RED STAR® Platinum Superior Baking Yeast®
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons instant nonfat dry milk
• 3 ½ – 3 ¾ cups KING ARTHUR® Unbleached Bread Flour

Egg wash & Topping

• 1 large egg white, plus 1 tablespoon water
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped sliced almonds
• 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar

Directions

1. To roast beets: Preheat oven to 400°F. Rinse beets well; trim stems leaving 2 inches. Wrap in foil and place on rimmed baking sheet, roast 1 hour or until fork tender. Cool slightly, remove skin, and mash.
2. For filling: In bowl of food processor fitted with steel blade, crumble almond paste. Pulse 4 ½ ounces (2/3 cup) beets, almond flour, sugar, salt, butter, vanilla and egg white until a thick puree. Cover and refrigerate.
3. For dough: Combine warm almond milk, sugar and yeast; let proof 5 minutes.
4. In bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle, mix butter, egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt, dry milk and yeast mixture. 
5. Exchange paddle for dough hook; gradually stir in enough flour until soft dough is formed. Knead on low speed 7 minutes. Transfer dough to greased bowl. Cover; let rise 1 hour.
6. Deflate dough; scale into 12 equal pieces. Roll each into 12” x 3” rectangle. Spread 1 rounded tablespoon filling on dough almost to edges, and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon almonds.
7. Starting from long end, roll each into a log. Place logs on cookie sheet; cover and place in freezer 10 minutes. With seam-side down, cut log in half lengthwise. With cut-sides up, starting in center, twist together. Shape into a wreath; pinch ends together and seal.
8. Place rolls on two 12” x 18” parchment-lined baking sheets, leaving 2” between each roll. Cover; let rise until almost doubled. Near the end of the rise, preheat oven to 350°F.
9. Whisk egg white with water and brush on rolls. Sprinkle on almonds and turbinado sugar. Bake 18 – 20 minutes, until lightly golden and internal temperature is 190°F – 195°F. Remove rolls to rack and cool.

Yield 12

This shows the steps in shaping:
1 (top) - dough weighed
2 - rolled to about 3" x 12"
3 - spread with filling
4 - rolled into a long log shape

After shaping and rising, these rolls are
ready to bake.