Taro Bread

Ingredients

Taro Paste
16 oz frozen Taro root2 Tbsp sugar
8 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp peanut oil

Bread
3 Cups flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1.5 cups water

A couple of hours before you're ready to make the bread, take out the frozen taro. You can also use fresh taro and cut it into 1" thick pieces. Steam the Taro for about 15-20 minutes. It should be fork tender, meaning you can easily stick a fork in it. Melt 8 Tbsp butter and mash the taro root. Add the peanut oil and mix. You want the consistency of thick mashed potato. The paste shouldn't be wet or creamy like mashed potato. Let it cool.

Combine flour with 1 cup of tao paste and mix. Add salt and yeast and mix. Add 1.5 cups of warm water until you get a wet no-knead dough.

Cover and let it rise for 12 hours. After 12 hours, the dough should have tripled and have lots of holes.

Turn the dough out on your work surface. Take the remaining taro paste out of the and microwave it for 1 minute to heat it up. It should be warm, but not hot. Flatten the dough and spread the taro paste. Don't add too much. Shape the dough into a loaf. My loaf was quite soft, so I decided to rise it in the bowl instead of on the counter.

Preheat the dutch oven at 550 for 30-60 min. I usually start it once I've formed the loaf. Bake covered at 500 for 30, followed by 5-10min uncovered.

The dough was quite soft after rising for an hour, so it ended up looking funny :) The smell of taro is wonderful and fills the house.