I'm Never Buying Hamburger Buns Again

I found this recipe on a new site I've been following since I met her at a mutual friend's party. She has a fun and diverse blog called dreadlock girl.

I decided to try this recipe out for the first time on my whole Bible study. I made a triple batch and fully expected I might ruin it and have to go buy buns for the end of the year party... But I didn't!!

Everyone loved them! They consistently rated it a 9 or 10 out of 10. Sooo I will be making these again for sure! I didn't use them for hamburgers though. We sliced them in half and put chicken salad inside. SO YUMMY!

Anyway, here was my attempt:

I bit off a little more than I could chew and was trying to cook homemade Mac-n-Cheese while uploading pictures to my computer at the same time. Next time I'll work in phases... because I took longer than the 5 min it takes for the yeast to become fluffy... and it overflowed! But not before I got a picture of it :)

 We have a lot of people in our group and many of them are little :) so I divided one of the 3 batches into 16. I don't have a "dough scraper" so I used a butter knife. I think it worked ok... I was trying to be gentle when forming it into balls because I think they say the more a dough is handled, the tougher it becomes. I don't know...

Anyway, I made some with the egg topping that the recipe calls for and some with a melted butter topping.  I think I'll go with the butter. I also didn't use sesame seeds. I also don't have parchment paper, so I used wax paper and probably won't do that again. It stinks in there! My Silpat pan liners were awesome (as usual).

Both turned out really well... except the egg one had bits of fried egg around the bottom of each roll from where it dripped down. Maybe I need to get one of those paintbrusher things for food too...

Here is the recipe from her site (I inserted my own pics from some of the steps):

Light Brioche Buns (for Hamburgers and Much More)


Time: 1 hour, plus 2 to 4 hours’ rising

3 tablespoons warm milk
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened.

1. In a glass measuring cup, combine 1 cup warm water, the milk, yeast and sugar. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, beat 1 egg.

2. In a large bowl, whisk flours with salt. Add butter and rub into flour between your fingers, making crumbs. Using a dough scraper, stir in yeast mixture and beaten egg until a dough forms. Scrape dough onto clean, unfloured counter and knead, scooping dough up, slapping it on counter and turning it, until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes.

Almost done...

Done :)

 3. Shape dough into a ball and return it to bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.

 4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using dough scraper, divide dough into 8 equal parts. Gently roll each into a ball and arrange 2 to 3 inches apart on baking sheet. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let buns rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours.

 5. Set a large shallow pan of water on oven floor. Preheat oven to 400 degrees with rack in center. Beat remaining egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush some on top of buns. Bake, turning sheet halfway through baking, until tops are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Yield: 8 buns.

Notes: For a very quick one-hour rise put the rising dough in your oven (make sure it is off) and pour the boiling water from the last step of the recipe into a shallow pan on a lower rack (if you have two racks in your oven). Then close the oven quickly and let the dough rise in this sort of greenhouse and you will not need to wait very long for it to double. Then your water is already in there for the last step. I do this for all my bread now since one of my favoirite friends told me this oven greenhouse trick.


Rating: 9.5
Carbs: 25 grams per 1/16th, 51g per 1/8th

Thanks Bethany! This one's a winner! Maybe I'll make them again today :)

Update: 7-9-11 I keep making these and they are soooo good. A couple of times they have been too sticky to knead, so I just add a little flour and that does the trick. Also I have experimented with different amounts of whole wheat bread flour. It didn't rise as well... but I may not have given it enough time. Anyway, I found that with 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of white, it was pretty healthy and still tasted really soft and good.

Here are a few more things we have done with them:

They taste good just by themselves or with butter and jam on them.

They are awesome with Barbequed Chicken from the slow cooker!

And tonight we finally tried a good old hamburger. SO GOOD! It was nice and hot outside today so I just set them in the sun to rise and it took about half the time. Yum.

No Knead Bread

We have another keeper! Thank goodness! I was starting to get discouraged. I made this recipe with whole wheat flour because it's healthier to have the whole grains. It took a little planning but it was so worth it. The only problem I keep running into is that I really should double things for a bigger family. So I will make two of these next time. The other thing I am finding is that there are a lot of recipes that call for dutch ovens. I'm so glad I was given one.

Here is the recipe:

3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. yeast
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 2/3 cups water

Combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until blended. Dough will be very sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 16 hours.

Place dough on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour and fold the dough onto itself twice. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 min.

Then flour your fingers and dough just enough to keep it from sticking. Then quickly shape dough into a ball. Sprinkle a cotton towel with plenty of flour and add the ball. Put the dough seam side down and let rise for 2 hours. Dough should be twice its size and will spring back when poked.

30 min. before dough is done, put the dutch oven (cast iron) into the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.

Put the dough ball in seam side up in the pan. Try to not push on the dough.

Then put the lid on and bake for 30 min.

Uncover and bake another 15 to 30 min to brown the top. Then transfer the whole pot to a wire rack to cool for another 10 min. Use potholder to turn the pot and slide the bread out.

Yum!

We sliced it up and served it with some curry chicken salad. I'll share that recipe next...

Rating: 8
Calories: 1220 in the whole thing.
Carbohydrates: 261 "

Amish Bread - Attempt #1

I found a recipe for Amish bread and have heard that it is delicious. So I tried it. Cliff said that it couldn't really be Amish bread if it's made in the bread machine as the recipe called for and I agreed.

But I did it anyway.

I don't like making bread in the bread machine. Rolls and Pizza dough are great! But the bread crust is too hard and the shape makes it difficult to slice. I will keep searching because I know there must be a way...

We rated the bread at an average of 6. It tasted good inside, but again the crust was too crunchy. The only thing I can tell that makes it different from other breads is that it had a longer period of rising in the machine.

Next time I think I'll try to pull it out after the dough rises and bake it in the oven in some other pan. Or I'll just try a different recipe altogether.

Suggestions?

French Bread

Recently we tried to make French bread. It was super easy and will be a regular from now on I'm sure. Kaiah did the whole thing, start to finish, by herself.

Mmmm! It was really good!