Multi-Grain Sweet Potato Rolls

Not too long ago, I was thumbing through a cook book trying to find a good recipe for rolls (Yes, I do occasionally use other people's recipes when I cook). I came across a recipe for potato rolls, and thought "I can do better than that". Potatoes add a great texture element to bread, and I figured sweet potatoes would have a similar effect. I bet the recipe in the book I found (Cooking for Two by Debbie G. Harman, in case you are interested), was alright, but the recipe I came up with is stellar. I've made them two times now, and my very biased opinion thinks they are some of the greatest rolls ever.

Ingredients:
4 tsp yeast
3 TBS sugar
3/4 cup warm water
1 cup sweet potato puree
3/4 warm milk
1 egg (slightly beaten)
1/4 cup butter (melted)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups oat flour
1 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. (Man, I am getting so good at telling people to preheat!) Add the yeast and sugar to the warm water, and let it sit until it gets all frothy. We have done this before, so you should know what frothy looks like. Combine all of the wet ingredients (yeast mixture, potato puree, milk, egg, butter, and oil) together.

All the wet ingredients.

Add 1 cup of each flour to the wet ingredients, stirring, by hand, until well combined. Add the remaining flour a little at a time, until it gets too hard to stir. At this point dump the mixture out onto a floured surface, and knead in any remaining flour, adding a little more white flour if the dough seems too sticky.

Before kneading.

After you are done kneading, form the dough into a ball, place in a bowl, let the dough rise in a warm place until it is doubled in size. After it is done rising, it is time to shape it into rolls. You can do this in any manner you see fit, but let me make a suggestion.
Dump the dough out onto a floured surface, and flour the top.

Roll the dough out into a large oval.

Cut the dough into slices.

And tie slices into knots

My slices were not all even, so I used 2 on some rolls, and just one on others. Whichever way you decide to form rolls, your yield should be about 2 dozen. Put them on a sprayed cookie sheet, and let them rise for about 15 minutes. At this point stick them into your pre-heated oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until the tops start to brown.

Viola! Tasty rolls that you can feel good about! Let me give you a few hints before you actually make the rolls though. First, you don't need to buy oat flour for this recipe, all you really need is oatmeal and a blender.

Making my oat flour.

Next, my sweet potato puree was pretty thin, I blend it with water. If you use a thicker puree, you might need to add either a little more milk or a little more water. One of the time I made the recipe, I added a few tablespoons ground flax seed. The texture remains the same, but you get some Omega-3 when you eat it.  I'm really happy with this recipe, and hope other people will try it and let me know what they think.