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Sweet Potato Raised Buns
Boil 1 large sweet potato, mash till very smooth. Cool. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons sugar, little grated lemon rind and 1/2 compressed yeast cake mixed with little lukewarm water. Stir in 1/2 cup flour and beat till smooth. Then gradually add enough more flour to make stiff dough. Knead well, set aside till double in bulk (about 1 1/2 hours). Then break off small pieces of the dough, shape into buns 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place close together in a well greased baking pan, let rise again half to three-quarters of an hour, and bake in hot oven (400 degrees) for 25 minutes.
A soft, faintly sweet yeast bun leavened with nothing but mashed sweet potato for moisture and sugar for the yeast. The dough's hydration comes entirely from the potato, so the potato is the variable to watch.
- The hinge: judge the flour by feelNo milk or water is added beyond the spoonful used to slacken the yeast, so all the liquid comes from the potato. A large sweet potato yields roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups of mash; add flour a few tablespoons at a time and stop as soon as the dough is stiff but still tacky. Overshooting gives dry, dense buns with no way to correct.
- Compressed yeast cakeHousehold cakes of this period were commonly about 0.6 oz, though sizes varied, so half a cake is roughly 0.3 oz (about 8 g) of fresh yeast. Substitute about 1 teaspoon active dry or instant yeast, and skip the softening water if using instant.
- Potato temperatureThe recipe says only to cool the mash; cool it to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Hot sweet potato holds heat stubbornly in the centre of the bowl and can kill the yeast.
- OvenThe 400F given is a genuine hot oven for buns of this size and needs no adjustment.
- Baking timeTwenty-five minutes suits buns crowded in a pan, where the sides steam rather than brown. Freestanding buns of 1 1/2 inches will be done in 15 to 18 minutes; pull them when the tops are deep gold and the centre reads about 195F.
- Rising timesThe 1 1/2 hours and the second rise of 30 to 45 minutes assume a warm kitchen. Sweet potato dough is heavy and often slower; go by the doubling, not the clock.
- Lemon rind"Little grated lemon rind" means the zest of about half a lemon. It is there to cut the sweetness of the potato, not to read as lemon.
- YieldExpect about 18 to 24 small buns from one large potato. Pull them apart while warm and serve with butter.