An easy Recipe for Rainbow Bread

If you looking for ideas to jazz up the birthday breakfast of your rainbow princess, you have to try this recipe for rainbow bread. Or if you are looking for a colorful menu item for the Rainbow-themed party? You need a Rainbow sandwich made with this gorgeous and bright, pastel-colored rainbow bread.

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Get to know the Unicorn bread!

Before we move on to the recipe for this Rainbow bread, take a moment to admire this beauty! How gorgeous is this rainbow bread! My kids are just in love with this beautiful colored rainbow bread.

MY 4 YO calls it Unicorn bread! ?.

It was Holi last week, so I decided to make something colorful to match the theme of the festival. I shared it on my IG and got a great response from my Instafam.

That is when I decided to share this bread recipe on my blog. It was not until I started writing this recipe for rainbow bread, I realized that it's a thing in America. People recalling the Rainbow bread from the 90s!

Anyways fast forward to the present, Holi of 2021, impulsively I decided to make this Rainbow bread recipe.

Introduction to the recipe of Rainbow bread

You can make this rainbow bread either with a sourdough starter or commercial yeast. It is an eggless bread recipe like every other recipe on the blog.

This bread is just like a regular white sandwich bread with 70 percent hydration.

 Alright, I know many of you might not like 70 percent hydration. But it is not sticky dough. I have special tips to handle the dough which will ensure that you do not have any trouble in rolling and shaping the loaf.

Why give this colored bread a try?

• It’s a simple, yet party-pleasing bread.
• You can flavor and color this bread as per your party theme. Be it bright rainbow colors or pleasing pastel shades.
• It makes a great sandwich bread. It is light fluffy and gorgeous!
• You only need a few ingredients for making this colored bread recipe.

How to color bread dough?

1. Artificial food colors: gel or powder
2. Natural homemade food colors
3. Organic natural food color powders
   
   

1. Coloring the dough with food colors

Can you put food coloring in bread dough?

Yes, why not? That is exactly what we are going to do here. I would suggest choosing gel colors, as they are more potent, and vibrant, and you do not need to add too much.

Powdered colors would also be great. But I have no experience using them in the dough.

How do you Color bread naturally?

So...If you do not want to use artificial colors, you can choose to use natural homemade food colors.

A few suggestions for homemade food colors:

• Yellow: Make a thick paste of turmeric and use the paste in the dough to color the dough.
• Orange: Reduced carrot juice gives a great orange color.
• Green: Spinach puree is best to get a green color. Knead the dough with the spinach puree and add water only if required.
• Purple: For making purple color extract the juice from purple cabbage and use the juice to knead the dough.
• Pink: Beets give the best pink color. But always use cooked beets to extract the color. I like to boil the beetroots and then puree them. You can use the puree as a whole or sieve the puree through a nut bag and use only the juice.
  
  

Things to keep in mind if you are dying dough with homemade natural food colors:

•  Please note that if you choose to use the puree, be it beetroot or spinach, they bring in a lot of fiber as well. This weakens the overall elasticity of the dough and the resultant rainbow bread might be a little dense. So, if you want the perfect light and fluffy bread, use the juice instead of puree.
  
• The natural food colors tend to lose their brightness and vibrance on cooking, especially spinach. The green color is because of the chlorophyll. Cooking denatures chlorophyll and the green color changes from bright green to dull gray-green color. A similar thing happens in many other food colors. So, choose wisely when deciding on which colors to use in the recipe for Rainbow bread.
  
• The natural food colors come with a natural flavor and aroma. For instance, if we add more turmeric to get the bright yellow color, the flavor and aroma of turmeric can overpower the whole bread.
  
• The same is true for many other colors. So, when you will be using 3-4 colors or say flavors, you will have to ensure that they complement each other. Not all-natural flavors go well together.
  
  

Using organic natural food coloring

There are numerous organic food color powders in the market. They are a little pricey but give great color and a natural flavor to the bread. For instance, the super color powders like Blue butterfly pea flower, Purple sweet potato, Green Pandan leaf, Red beet powder, etc.

Methods for Coloring the dough for making Rainbow bread

The main challenge with the rainbow bread is coloring the dough.

There are two ways of making colored dough.

Method 1: Adding color to the wet ingredients

 The wet ingredient, in this case, is milk. For this method, you can start by dividing the flour and milk into equal parts. Then, go ahead and mix the desired colors in milk and knead every colored dough separately.

Advantage: The advantage of this method is that it is easy to get uniform color throughout the dough.

Disadvantage: Just a little tedious, to carry out. This method requires dividing all the wet and dry ingredients initially. More measuring and more bowls and glasses to clean!

Method 2: Adding color to the combined dough

Combine all the dry and wet ingredients except the colors. Then, divide the dough into equal parts and transfer it into separate bowls.

 Now add the drops of desired food colors to the respective dough and knead them, one by one. Knead until the dough becomes smooth and the color is uniformly incorporated in the dough.

Irrespective of the method you use, this rainbow bread recipe requires all colored dough to be kneaded separately.

For adding color to the dough and I like to choose the latter method.

 Mixing the color in milk does make the color in dough more uniform and easier to achieve but it's just more glasses and bowls to wash. And in both cases, you will have to knead the doughs separately, so like to save me from having to do more dishes and glasses for cleaning! You can choose either of the two methods.

Also, I do not knead the dough completely, before mixing the colors. I just combine the flour and wet ingredients so that there are no patches of dry flour. Just like prepping it for autolyze. Thereafter I add a few drops of gel food color and knead one kind of colored dough at a time.  (Find the detailed instructions in the method section).

One pro tip is to clean the workstation thoroughly with the dough scraper after kneading every color of dough. The colored dough particles of dough can stick to the other. So, whenever we are working with colored dough, it’s important to maintain a clean workstation.

Ingredients needed for the rainbow bread recipe.

Leavening agent

I have developed this rainbow bread recipe using a sourdough starter. The starter that I use has 100 percent hydration. I have also made this bread with the sourdough discard with satisfactory results.

 Also, you can conveniently replace the sourdough starter with 1 packet of instant yeast. I have not tried it myself, but there is no reason for it not to work. The issue might be with hydration. You might want to add 2 tablespoons more liquid while kneading. But do not add it in the beginning, add towards the end, only if you think that the dough needs more hydration.

Interested in learning how to make a sourdough starter from scratch. Read my comprehensive guide to a sourdough starter.

Flour

I have used regular all-purpose flour in this recipe for Rainbow bread. Do not be tempted to use whole wheat flour, we need white flour for the colors to pop up right through.

 It is rainbow white bread. If you are using, homemade color purees, I suggest using bread flour. I have made bread with spinach puree multiple times. It tastes great, but it becomes a bit dense. Bread flour can help with the texture in such situations as it has a higher gluten content.

Milk

I am keeping this rainbow bread recipe amazingly simple. No butter, oils, etc. Just whole milk!

Milk is the only enriching and tenderizing agent in this bread recipe. It will keep the bread soft and gives it the basic flavor.

Food colors

Color is the only distinguishing factor that separates it from a regular sandwich loaf. I have used gel food colors to color the dough. I have stated numerous options in the section about How to color the dough.

How to make rainbow sandwich bread?

Step 1: Preparing the leavening agent: yeast or sourdough starter.

How to make a rainbow bread with active dry yeast?

So, if you are making the Rainbow bread with yeast, you will need to start by activating the yeast.

The active dry yeast needs to be activated by giving it a feeling of sugar, water, and ideal temperature. So, we take warm water and add sugar to it. When yeast gets food (sugar), water, and ideal temperature (105-115⁰F), it will start to bloom. When you see a bubbly foamy mass, it is a confirmation that the yeast is ready to be used for baking the bread.

In this recipe for rainbow bread, you should start by warming the milk in the microwave and then dissolve in the sugar. Further, add the active dry yeast and leave it to bloom for 5 minutes. When the yeast and milk mixture is foamy and bubbly, add it to the dry ingredients and just combine.

Follow the rest of the recipe as instructed in the recipe card.

Sourdough starter

I like to start by ensuring that the sourdough is ripe. I remove the sourdough starter from the refrigerator first thing in the morning and give it a feeding. So that it is ready (in 4-5 hours) by the time I start to make the dough.

If you maintain a small size starter, use the Levain method. Take 40 g of ripe sourdough starter and add 40 g of water and flour each. Let it ferment. After 4-5 hours or when it starts to become bubbly, add it as a leavening agent in the recipe for rainbow bread.

Alternately you can make this recipe with the sourdough discard.

Start the night before. Remove the collected discard from the fridge and feed it. Cover and let it stay on the kitchen counter overnight. By the morning, it should be ready to use.

Step 2: Combining the wet and dry ingredients.

There is no need to knead the dough at this stage. We just want to combine the flour, milk, and salt.

 If we knead the dough, its gluten structure will be developed, and it will be more difficult to color it. It would take more muscle grease to achieve uniform color in the dough. So, for making this rainbow bread recipe, I suggest, to combine the wet and dry ingredients, and then, divide the combined dough into equal portions, depending on how many colors you want in your bread.

 I have made 4 colors, so I divided the combined dough into 4 portions. And then added pink, blue, green, and yellow food coloring to each portion.

Step 3: Kneading the dough for rainbow-colored bread.

This is the key task in the recipe. But since the dough portions are small, it will not take much time.

A quick tip:  To reduce the kneading task, let the time do some of your jobs. Just knead the dough until it comes together and has a uniform color. Instead of kneading further, just cover with cling wrap or a kitchen towel. Let the dough rest and autolyze. Repeat the same process with each colored dough.

 Then go back after 20 minutes and knead to form a smooth dough. The dough will come together easily, without much elbow grease!

Step 4: Bulk rising

Let the colored dough bulk rise in a warm place. I like to keep mine in the oven, with the oven lights turned ON. You can also put it in an instant pot for a quick rise. Choose the yogurt mode on custom temperature and keep it at 80 ⁰F. This will speed up the bulk rise.

But for this rainbow bread recipe, I recommend letting the dough cold rise in the refrigerator overnight.

This will prevent the dough from being sticky and make the rolling process much easier.

Step 5: Rolling and shaping rainbow swirl bread

When we put pressure on rolling the dough, it can easily stick to the workstation. So, when you roll the dough sheets in this rainbow bread recipe, keep lifting the dough and dusting some flour under it from time to time.

When the dough has doubled in volume, it is time to shape the loaf. Remove one color of dough onto a flour-dusted workstation. I start with the green-colored dough. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangular sheet. Then, repeat the same process with yellow, pink, and blue colored dough.  

Then stack the dough sheets one over each other. Roll it into a log. So, that after baking, it looks like a rainbow swirl bread!

Step 6: Proofing the dough

Transfer the dough to a prepared loaf pan and cover the pan.

I like to use a square bread mold with a lid. you can use whatever you have on hand. This recipe works best for a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Let the dough proof till it becomes doubles. The rainbow bread made with active dry yeast will proof much faster than the sourdough bread. Proofing time in sourdough bread will highly depend on the vigor of the starter and the ambient temperature.

Step 7: Baking

Bake the Rainbow bread at 375 ⁰F for 40 minutes. I let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then, remove the rainbow bread onto a cooling rack.

Let the bread cool for half an hour before slicing this gorgeous rainbow swirl bread.

Storage Notes

The rainbow bread stores well at room temperature for about 3 days. The sourdough bread stays longer at room temperature. Keep the bread wrapped in a cloth and then into a bread bag or breadbasket. You can even make it weeks ahead of the special event. Just bake and freeze it by wrapping it in a foil and freezer safe bag.

Tips for making the rainbow bread.

• Start with bright vibrant colors in the dough to get a vibrant loaf.
• Natural food colors, lose some of their vibrance on baking. So, choose the kind of colors wisely. If you are going to use homemade natural colors in your rainbow bread recipe, try to reduce the colored juice by cooking so that the color in the product is more concentrated.
• When you are done working with one colored dough, scrape the workstation well. The colored dough particles stuck on the workstation can stick to the other colored dough.
• Cold proofing makes the dough easy to handle and roll into sheets.
• While rolling the dough sheets, keep dusting the work surface and dough with flour to prevent it from sticking to the workstation or the rolling pin.
  
  
  A few of our popular Bread recipes are:

• How to make all-purpose Flour Sourdough bread
• Sourdough sandwich bread recipe
• How to make Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread
• How to make Surprisingly Soft Oatmeal Sandwich Bread with Sourdough
• A complete guide for wheat pita bread: sourdough/ Yeast
  
  
  I have tried to make this rainbow bread recipe as descriptive as possible so, that you can make it perfect in the first attempt. Do let me know your thought in the comment section below.
  Also, you can tag me on Instagram with your creations.
  

Recipe card for rainbow bread