Quick Hamburger Buns

We needed hamburger buns, so I decided to make some using a recipe I found for 40 minute Buns. I thought these should be quick, and they were. It uses a lot of yeast to get the fast rise, 2 tablespoons. Also there is oil and egg which should make a soft dough. I used Hodgson Mill Naturally White flour that I had on hand. I also added 1 teaspoon of dried onion to add a little flavor. These are supposed to be fast, to I took a picture of the clock as I started.

I let the yeast dissolve in the warm water then mixed all the ingredients by hand to get everything wet, then I turned on the oven to 425 using the Bread Bake setting that gets the oven completely hot before saying it is ready. With the oven heating, I used the KitchenAid mixer to knead the dough for 5 minutes as called for in the recipe.

I turned out the dough and formed it into 12 buns and placed them on my baking sheets. I used the last piece of parchment for one and oiled the other sheet. Here they are.

The clock is running and at this point it appears that we have used 30 of the 40 minutes promised in the recipe. The oven wasn't hot yet, so I covered the buns with cloths and misted the cloths with water while I waited for the oven to get hot. Note for future baking: Turn on the oven early, not at the last minute. The buns go into the oven at 5:38 for 8 to 12 minutes. I think I used about 11 minutes for baking. I used a cup of hot water in my hot cast iron frying pan in the bottom of the oven, so there was steam for these. They cracked during baking. Not good for hamburger buns. And the little bit of onion I put in turned out to be quite potent. This is what they looked like when out of the oven.
The crumb is OK. Nice and tight. The crust is crispy and a little too hard for a hamburger. I guess I will reduce the temperature next time to, oh, 375 and I won't use steam. Here is the crumb.
And the clock says we are done at 5:58, about 1 hour and 10 minutes for everything. I guess bread takes a little longer to make than you think and generally longer than the recipe says. Here is the last clock image.

Beer Bread

Barry Harmon on alt.bread.recipes did it again. He posted a recipe for a beer bread that sounded simple and that I immediately wanted to modify. His recipe calls for all purpose and cake flour. So I made it with bread flour. His notes and recipe are found at http://www.artisanbreadbaking.com/blogs. The title is 2008 06 11 Beer Bread and a Nice Surprise.

I followed his recipe fairly closely using a warm bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Barry did not specify the beer he used) and only bread flour. So here is the modified recipe:

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast (one package)
1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar

4 cups bread flour (512 grams). I weighed the flour.
1 1/4 cups warm light beer (285 ml). I weighed the beer.
Note: Next time I will use the whole bottle of beer and skip the water.
2 tsp salt.

I put it all in the mixer bowl and smooshed it together with one hand until it felt evenly wet. Then I went outside to play. After 40 minutes or a little longer talking to my neighbor over the fence, I turned on the mixer for about 5 minutes on my lowest setting (real low no longer works) and let it run. The dough came together nicely. I turned it out and rinsed the bowl, then oiled it and replaced the dough to rise for an hour covered with plastic wrap. Then I went outside to play some more. After all, this is Saturday, Flag day, and I had to install my new flag and pole.

When the flag was installed and the dough was risen, I put it into a floured wicker basket and covered it with plastic wrap again. I turned on the oven to 450 deg F which turned out to be too hot for this bread.

Here is the bread rising in the basket.


Following the instructions I turned out the risen loaf onto the peel lined with parchment and placed it into the oven on the tiles, then added a cup of hot water to the cast iron frying pan that lives in the bottom of my oven. Here is a picture of the bread in the oven on the tiles. Note the steam condensing on the glass window on the left lower corner. Also there is a pizza stone on the top shelf of the oven.


Here is the finished loaf and the crumb.





It turned out that the temperature given in the original recipe, 450 deg F, is probably too high for my oven. The bottom crust burned a little. Next time I will use 400 deg F. Here is the bottom crust picture.



Is it different? I don't really know. The crust is crusty, chewy as it should be. The crumb color is darker than a white bread, but not as dark as a wheat bread. It is chewy and tasty. The bread is easy to make and could be done in a bread pan just as easily for sliced bread.

Barry, its a keeper.

Barry Harmon's French Bread

Barry Harmon is a frequent poster on the alt.bread.recipes news group. Recently he posted this recipe for French Bread

32 oz bread flour
20 oz water
1 Tbs salt
1 packet yeast

It sounded easy so I decided to try it. I mixed the dough in the Kitchen Aid mixer and put it in a plastic tub with a loose lid to rise. After it doubled, I divided it into two pieces and made a fougasse and a batard. The fougasse is a ladder bread with holes in it so it can be pulled apart and eaten as an appetizer. I patted out the dough onto a sheet of parchment in a sheet pan, then covered it with olive oil. I used kitchen shears to cut a leaf design in the flat dough, pulled the holes open and ground Italian spices over the whole thing. A little kosher salt went on last for that salty crunch.


It looks like I didn't pull the openings open enough. Next time I will. Meanwhile the batard was rising and ready to go into the hot oven. I washed the dough with water and sprinkled raw sesame seeds on top, then cut the dough with my new tomato knife that viince suggested to me. It works wonderful. (Next time I will angle the blade a little to cut less deep.) Here is the batard baking, finished and the crumb.







It looks like I didn't roll the batard as tightly as I should. Not too bad for a simple and easy French bread.

Here it all is as we got ready to try the fougasse with some olive oil for dipping, some cheese and a little wine.



Thanks, Barry. We enjoyed the bread.

One note. This bread does not keep well. Bake it and eat it. Although, I did freeze half a loaf while we went away for a week. It made fine toast when we got back.

English muffins with egg and vinegar

These are really good English muffins. Here is the recipe. It came from Ruth Reichi, with cooking technique from Alton Brown:

Mix
1/3 cup warm water
1 Tbs sugar
1 package active dry yeast
in the bowl of the mixer.

Warm 1 2/3 cup milk and
3 Tbs butter till melted
Cool, then add 1 egg
and 1 Tbs vinegar
and add it all to the yeast.

Stir in 2 1/2 cups (340 grams) of flour and mix for 5 minutes.
Add another 2 1/2 cups (340 grams more) flour and mix with the hook for 5 more minutes.
Let rise for 1 hour. The dough tripled in one hour. After the rise, I put it in the refrigerator for another hour to make it easier to handle.

Preheat the griddle to 300 deg F. [I put water on mine as it heats so I can tell when the corners are hot.]
Scale the dough into about sixteen 80 gram pieces. Coat liberally with corn meal. I used my wooden dough bowl with corn meal in it to coat the dough. Works nice.

Place rings on the hot griddle and spray lightly with cooking spray. Place a piece of dough in each ring, then place a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan on top of the rings. This forces the dough to stay in the ring. Cook for 5 minutes, then slip the rings off and turn the muffins to cook the other side for 5 more minutes. You don't need the cookie sheet for the second side. They should be golden brown on both sides. Cool completely on a cooling rack. Split with a fork.


Wife and I split one, coated it with olive oil, kosher salt, Italian spices and Parmesan cheese, then broiled it for an appetizer. Good.

These were too thick and were scaled to 125 grams. I note in the recipe to use 80 grams. They will be thinner and more like commercial muffins.

The last time I made these, I made them in the evening, let the dough rise, then put it in the refrigerator overnight. I baked them in the morning for my son and his family. Worked like a charm. Do let them cool, though. That is the finish of the cooking.

Another No-knead Bread

"No-Knead Bread - Another Variation using Beer

Bread...
18.5 oz bread flour
12 oz Yuenglings Traditional Lager (a dark lager)
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast (heaping)
2-1/2 teaspoon salt

Topping...
Sesame seeds
Flax seeds
Kosher salt, coarse

Mix the bread ingredients until the flour and beer are incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside at room temperature (65/70 degrees) for 16 hours, give or take.

Turn out the dough and give it a couple of folds stretching the dough to give a smooth surface. Heavily flour a wicker basket and place the dough in it, good side down. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and stick it in the oven with the light on. I added a bowl with warm water to raise the humidity. Let rise for 2 hours, give or take, until doubled.

Prepare the oven with the baking stone in the middle (it lives there) and cast iron frying pan on the bottom shelf (it lives there too).

Cover the peel with parchment paper, then invert the peel over the basket with the dough. Turn the whole thing over to get the bread onto the parchment and onto the peel.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Spray the top of the dough with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds, flax seeds and the kosher salt. Slash the dough with your design choice.

Slide the dough and the parchment paper onto the stone. Add 1 cup of hot water to the frying pan imediately. Now turn the oven down to 400 deg F. Bake for about 30 minutes or until done.

Cool and store in a paper bag.

My loaf deflated when I turned it onto the peel. It should fill the basket; mine didn't. If it deflates, bake it anyway.

Here is the crumb. This is great. Just what I wanted. Big holes, soft bread, tender crust.

Irish Soda Bread

I found this recipe for Irish white soda bread while browsing food blogs. It is an Irish soda bread with no sugar, eggs, seeds, raisins, or anything else. I made it with Harvest King flour and powdered buttermilk. The result is a nice moist loaf with a yellowish tinge from the flour. The flavor is nice, very plain, but more flavorful unlike a biscuit. Mrs. A and I had it for breakfast this morning with butter and blueberry jam. I toasted some for a peanut butter sandwich snack this afternoon. Even better. The original recipe is at http://www.valskitchen.com/ under Soda Far Soda Good.

Here is the recipe I used:

400g plain flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp bread soda

300ml buttermilk. I used 5 tablespoons of dry buttermilk and 300 ml of water.


Method

Mix the flour, salt and bread soda together in a large mixing bowl.

Add in the buttermilk and mix completely. Use your hand in a claw-like shape to bind the ingredients, you can use a dough hook. I did.

Take out of the bowl and put onto a floured work surface and knead into a circular loaf shape.

Cut a deep cross into the bread, this allows it to expand, and bake at 170 degrees C (350 degrees F) for one hour. I baked it at 350 in the convection oven with a cold start for 40 minutes.

Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool.

The digital scale I use

This is the digital scale I use for making bread. Barry Harmon asked what it was and it seem to have no model number unless 9V is the model. (I think it is the battery.) There is also a minute timer with a beeper. I don't use the timer as we have several others. The scale displays a "H" in the upper left corner when nearing the upper limit of 2 kg or 4.5 lbs. I suppose that is a warning device since it has no other obvious purpose. The scale turns itself off after several minutes unless it is used again. A touch will keep it going if you don't want it to shut off. I don't remember how much it cost, but it was in the $10 range. Our e-mail exchange is below the pictures.



Barry Harmon wrote:
>> I found a nice digital kitchen scale at Home Goods. Now I always weigh my ingredients. I even weigh when doing volume recipes. That way I can adjust intelligently if I need to.
>>
>> My wife likes the scale, too. It is easy to use, tares out the weight of the dish holding the ingredient, weighs in grams our ounces/lbs, and turns itself off if not used. I can weigh 2 lb of flour in the mixer bowl with no trouble.
>>
>> If you have a Marshals, Home Goods, or TJ Max nearby, these may have these from time to time. Keep your eyes out for them.
>>
>> For those unfamiliar with these store, they are purveyors of leftover merchandise from other stores that have sold out dated or overstock or bankrupt type merchandise. Lots of clothing, glassware, fancy stuff and kitchen articles. I love to browse there.
>>
>> John Andrews, Knoxville, Tennessee
>>
>
> John,
>
> What is the make and model of your scale? I've been on the lookout for a new scale for some time now, but haven't found one that is much of an improvement over my current, horrible, one.
>
> Barry

My scale is a Polder with no model number. I will post a picture on my bread blog so you can see it. See http://johnsbread.blogspot.com/.

John Andrews, Knoxville, Tennessee