Butterfly pea flower Multigrain Sourdough Bread

Published: Jan 17, 2020 · Modified: Dec 5, 2020 ·by Swathi.This post may contain affiliate links ·

Delicious Butterfly pea flower multigrain sourdough bread made with butterfly pea flower tea. No sugar added great tasting loaf with hint of earthy butterfly pea flower in background.

Butterfly pea flower is used to made tea in Thailand. In my home town we call butterfly pea flower in Malayalam as Shankupushpam (Clitoria Ternatea) which is considered as healing plant. I wanted to make sourdough bread with it as I have seen beautiful blue bread. Finally, this week I made butterfly pea flower sourdough bread. I tried twice first time it turned out to be high hydration and not able to develop gluten as I wanted end up a flat bread. Next time I figured out to make it perfect with 72 % hydration.

What is butterfly pea flower?

Butterfly pea flower (Clitoria Ternatea) has lot of medicinal and cultural values in South East Asia. In India, it is widely used in traditional Indian systems of medicine has been used for centuries as a memory enhancer, nootropic, antistress, anxiolytic, antidepressant, anticonvulsant, tranquilizing and sedative agent. A wide range of secondary metabolites including triterpenoids, flavonol glycosides, anthocyanins and steroids has been isolated from Clitoria ternatea Linn. Its extracts possess a wide range of pharmacological activities including antimicrobial, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, diuretic, local anesthetic, antidiabetic, insecticidal, blood platelet aggregation-inhibiting and for use as a vascular smooth muscle relaxing property. This plant has a long use in traditional Ayurvedic medicine for several diseases and the scientific studies has reconfirmed those with modern relevance.( Heinrich et.al. 2008) In Ayurveda the entire plant its leaves, roots, flowers are used for preparation of many traditional ancient herbal medicines. Its leaves powdered used for treating brain disorders. This flower is also considered as sacred used in poojas and temple.

However, I haven’t seen used as tea in India. But in Thai cuisine, Butterfly Pea Tea is a drink made by infusing the flowers of the Butterfly Pea plant in hot water, much as regular tea is infused to make tea. it can be drunk either hot or cold and is regularly served in Thai hotels and upmarket massage outlets. This is used to make color changing cocktail, mocktail, adding lime juice or roselle changes the PH of the drink which causes the color to change from deep blue to purple or even red.

How I made butterfly pea flower sourdough bread?

I bought dried flower from Amazon and used about 15g dried flower and water to make tea. Both flower and water are brought to boil and set aside for sweeping. You can first boil the water and then add dried flower too. Since I want a deeper blue color, I seeped the flower for about 10 minutes. If you want lighter blue, then go for less seeping time or dilute with water. I used butterfly pea flower tea instead of water in the recipe. I didn’t add any sweetener if you want you can add some honey to the recipe. I used multigrain, bread flour as well as rye flour in this recipe. After baking I found that butterfly pea flower multigrain sourdough bread has subtle earthy taste.

This bread has dramatic cobalt blue crumb is achieved by using butterfly pea flower tea in place of water, but if you develop the acidity of the dough more using the retarded method, it transforms the bread into a rich violet color. Which I will try it later.

If you like naturally colored food then go for it, here is my Turmeric sourdough Bread which has blue hue. Next I may try matcha powder to make a green sourdough bread.

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