Saturday, January 29, 2011

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

BYOB is a group committed to a
 year long adventure of baking our own 
 bread and other baked goods instead of buying them.

Friday, January 28, 2011

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.