19 May Sourdough Blueberry Rolls (Vegan)

Forget Cinnamon Rolls, Make These Blueberry Rolls Instead

Cinnamon rolls have always been my all-time favorite sweet bread. I have been making my super fluffy sourdough cinnamon rolls at least twice a month on a regular basis, just so I will be able to have them for breakfast whenever I want. As much as I love cinnamon rolls, it’s good to change things up a bit sometimes. That is why I created the Double Chocolate Babka Rolls recipe. It’s literally the same concept, but with different flavored dough and fillings. As I made some blueberry jam the other day, why not use it as a filling and make some sourdough blueberry rolls? ☺️

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Purple Bread is the Prettiest Bread 💜

After my creation of the Blueberry Cheesecake Sourdough and the Blueberry Focaccia, I rediscover my love of purple color in baked goods. In fact, there are multiple ways in which you can color your dough with natural colors. The most popular and common way is to add mashed purple sweet potato. Ube (aka purple yam) and black rice are also two common ingredients to use when it comes to natural coloring. I have tried adding purple sweet potato to sourdough before. However, I didn’t find much difference in terms of flavor. Although aesthetic is important, to me, the flavor is equally, if not more predominant, when it comes to baking. So for this sourdough blueberry rolls recipe, I decided to add some freeze-dried blueberry powder in the dough, paired with some homemade blueberry jam as fillings.

Yudane Method

Similar to my Sourdough Cinnamon Roll recipe, I used Yudane method in the dough of these Sourdough Blueberry Rolls to make it extra moist and fluffy. Yudane method is the secret to make a soft and fluffy Japanese style bread. In order to bake using this method, you simply mix an equal portion of flour and boiling water. The effect of adding boiling water to flour is that it gelatinises the starch. The gelatinised starch will allow the starch to absorb more water, and thus enhancing the sweetness of the bread.

Yudane method is in fact similar to the Tangzhong method I used in my sourdough milk bread recipe. Unlike the 1:1 flour-to-water ratio in Yudane method, the Tangzhong mixture is made by heating up a mixture of flour and water in the ratio of 1:5 to 65°C.

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Stiff Starter

In this recipe, I used lievito madre (aka a stiff starter) at 40% hydration I made from my Panettone experiment. You can easily convert your sourdough starter to 40% hydration by feeding your starter in a starter : flour : water = 1 : 1 : 0.4 ratio. The reason why I used a stiff starter is to eliminate the hint of sourness in this bread. Chocolate doesn’t go well with the sourness from 100% hydration sourdough starter unless you add a ton of sugar in the dough.

To learn how to make your own sourdough starter, check out my Beginner’s Guide to Sourdough Baking.

Ancient Grains In Sweet Dough

For almost every sourdough I bake, I will usually add 10-30% of ancient grains in my recipes. And spelt is my favorite grains to use.  Some people might be reluctant to use whole grain flour in sweet bread, as whole grain bread are usually tough and dry. Fortunately, as I use both Yudane and sourdough in this recipe, making them not only moist and fluffy, but it also with a hint of nuttiness and earthy flavor. The ancient grains provided a more varied and complex flavor profile, hence greatly improved the depth of flavor of these rolls.