Seeded Hamburger Buns

For some reason I kept thinking sloppy joes this past week.  I was really hungry for some sloppy joes.  Hmmm.  I needed buns for my sloppy joes.  I had seen a blog post by Michelle at BigBlackDog who made her own salt crusted buns for her fried catfish sandwiches and I thought, "I can do that too!"  I wanted to get over yet another fear of making my own hamburger buns.

Well, I was very happy with the results.  Don't let anyone tell you that its hard to make hamburger buns from scratch at home.  It was VERY easy.  The recipe I decided to use for my buns can be found here.  I can always trust a King Arthur Flour recipe.  The only change I made was that I used half milk, half water for the 3/4 cup water.  I used 2 TBSP softened butter instead of oil for the fat.

I weighed my flour and dumped all my ingredients into my stand mixer, turned it on low for a minute or two using the paddle attachment, then switched to the dough hook and kneaded 7 minutes.  I  plopped my dough into a lightly oiled bowl and after an hour I shaped my buns.  Here is the video that Michelle included in her post and that I'm including as well so you can see how to shape the buns.

Here are my buns after they have been shaped and risen another hour:

As you can see there is no need for any kind of hamburger bun pan.  Just bake on a sheet pan!

After they bake for 10 minutes you brush with beaten egg white, spinkle on seeds and then after 5 more minutes you have:

After cooling and slicing they became the perfect vehicle for my sloppy joes for dinner.  Paired with some kettle chips and sliced apple it was a wonderful dinner.  The buns were also excellent with just deli turkey and some provolone cheese for lunch the next day.

I encourage everyone to try making their own hamburger buns.  You won't be disappointed!!!

Thank you for visiting my blog!

BYOB is a group committed to a

 year long adventure of baking our own 

 bread and other baked goods instead of buying them.

Transitional Multigrain Sandwich Bread

This week for my sandwich bread, I chose to try the Transitional Multigrain Sandwich Bread from page 106 in Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Bread.  For the two weeks prior to this week, I had made Peter Reinhart's Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire from the Bread Baker's Apprentice and my husband was actually requesting it for his lunch sandwiches I pack him!  I was so happy that he wanted my bread instead of that soft squishy supermarket stuff.

So this week I thought I'd try one of PR's Multigrain Breads that includes a little whole wheat flour in it and see if my husband still liked it.  He did!!!  Yea!  The Multrigrain Bread Extraordinaire used only bread flour, but the Transitional loaf uses 3 oz of whole wheat flour in addition to bread flour.  The loaf looked so pretty in the pan with such a nice dome on it that I had to take a picture (above) before I took it out of the pan.

This loaf was very good, but not quite as good as the Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire.  It toasted nicely and we used it for deli turkey sandwiches all week.  Here is the loaf out of the pan ready to be devoured:

We always have a slice apiece for dinner on the day I make the bread, otherwise the loaf does not fit in the plastic bag that I keep it in on the counter :)  It was still slightly warm inside when we cut it for dinner and was superb with a little butter spread on it.

Roasted Garlic Bread (25th Bread Braid)

I love garlic almost as much as I love pizza.  I couldn't wait to make the roasted garlic bread found on page 100 of the HB in 5 book.  I picked out my head of garlic very carefully at the grocery store.  People probably think I'm weird, because I take so long to pick out my produce, almost 15 minutes just to find that perfect head of garlic.  Most people in Kroger don't even hardly look at the produce they pick up.  I wanted this bread to have good garlic flavor so I picked the largest, most plump head of garlic I could find.  If it were summer I'd buy a beautifully big head of garlic from Blue Moon Farm  at the farmer's market, but alas it's not summer.

I cut off the top third of my garlic head to roast, placed it on foil, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, closed up the foil and roasted at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.  This summer when I roasted one, the cloves just kind of dried up, but this time they didn't.  The roasted cloves were shiny, gooey, chestnut colored nuggets that I squeezed out into a bowl.  I kind of mushed up the roasted cloves with the back of a spoon to smooth them out and kind of make a paste that I thought would distribute itself better throughout the dough.

Here is my first baked loaf:

I did cut the loaf in half horizontally like it suggested in the book, but I followed the guidelines for garlic bread included with the Bobby Flay spaghetti and meatball recipe I was making for dinner.  I minced a couple cloves of garlic, spread a butter/canola oil blend onto the slice of garlic bread and then sprinkled on the minced garlic and dried parsley.  I placed the bread under the broiler for 2-3 minutes just till I could smell the garlic (some bits were starting to brown) and then took it out.  I immediately applied fresh grated parmesan and it went to the table with our spaghetti.   I thought it was yummmmy and so did my hubby.  I will probably make this again in the future.  Here's our prepared slice:



I did not make the whole wheat and flax seed bread that was also part of this assignment.  It just didn't sound that interesting and looked like it would be bland so I skipped.  I make a whole wheat flax bread occasionally for my sandwhich bread and am happy with it, so I didn't really need another flax seed bread recipe.   

Also, I wanted to thank everyone again who helped me decide what kind of rum to buy for my Christmas Stollen.  It turned out beautifully!!  I chose Bacardi Select dark rum.  It was wonderful in the bread, but I  have to say that the stuff is vile by itself.  My husband had to make me try some just to see what I thought. 

I soaked my fruit overnight in the rum and I used the almond paste down the middle of the loaf.   My parents really liked it and were intrigued by the almond paste in the center.  My mom took a knife and spread her almond paste over the surface of her slices of bread.  The only problem I had was that like others, my loaf browned too much on the bottom before the internal temperature was high enough for it to be done.

Here's my stollen: