dabrownman's blog

I've been searching for a a nice sesame and poppy seeded hamburger bun that would stand up to our monthly, stacked,  piled high burger by not falling apart while still having a soft moist crumb that toasted up well.  I took Sylvia's bun recipe for a starting point and converted it to YW from commercial yeast.  Then we thought we would make some retarded cinnamon rolls out of the same dough since it seemed like the thing to do and a nice fit. 

The YW levain was strong after the 2nd build at at the 8 hour mark.  Right after the 3rd build I refrigerated it overnight.  The YW levain was stronger than we thought and it tripled in volume in the fridge.  Amazing beasts they are!

The next morning we mixed everything together in the KA, it is a sticky wet 77% hydration dough and then developed and fermented the dough doing S & F's on a floured work surface which cuts the stickiness and makes the dough managable at the end of the S & F's at 68% hydration.  It was 85 F in the kitchen when we got to the point of splitting off the 2 hamburger buns from the rest of the dough.   The buns were raised on the counter in the  4" ramekins they would be baked in - eventually.  The steamed mini oven at 400 F to start was perfect for them.  There is a formula and method to follow the pictures.  They ending up being just what we wanted.  The seeded Buns tasted great, didn't fall apart and toasted well.  The fix'ins included; wedge sweet and regular potato fries, caramelized onions and mushrooms, baked BBW beans, roasted poblano pepper, tomato and lettuce.  Why no bacon ?

Coat that Pyrex with non stick spray first or you will be sorry !

The remainder of the dough was rolled out to accept the filling and then rolled up from the short side to make a log that was sliced into 12 pieces.  The rolls were placed into a 9x13 Pyrex baking dish and placed into the fridge for an 18 hour rise.  I expected them to double and they did at least that - no worries.  Baked them off at 350 F straight out of the fridge with some butter smeared on top before they went into the oven.  When they were nice and browned, out they came to receive a nice cream cheese icing to gild the lily.  They were delicious - the best ever.  Now the same dough makes hamburger buns too.  A 2'fer.

 Method

 The YW levain is built over 3 stages  the first 2 stages are 4 hours each.  After the third stage is added at the 8 hour mark the levain is refrigerated overnight.  It will triple in volume while in the fridge.

 In the morning mix the rest of the ingredients with the levain in the mixing bowl.  Knead with a dough hook on KA 2 for 8 minutes.  Then increase speed to KA 3 for 2 minutes.  move to a plastic covered, oiled bowl.  Do 6 S & Fs at 15 minute intervals on a floured work surface returning the dough each time to a plastic covered bowl to rest.   This wet dough will firm up nicely.  Let rest on the counter for 1 hour after the last S&F.

 At this point I cut off enough dough to make 2 hamburger buns in4”ramekins.  These were allowed to rise on the counter until doubled in size.  A milk, water and egg yolk glaze was brushed on top and sesame and poppy seeds were sprinkled on.  They were then baked in a 400 F steamed mini oven for 10 minutes. The steam was then removed and the oven temperature turned down to 350 F convection this time.  After 5 minutes the ramekins were turned 180 degrees and baked another 5 minutes.  The buns were then removed from the ramekins and finished baking in 5 more minutes turning 180 degrees at the 2 and half minute mark.  The buns were then allowed to cool on a wire rack.

 The remainder of the dough was rolled out to ¼” thick rectangle and brushed with soft butter.  The filling was then added and the dough rolled up from the wide end.  

 Filling

 ¼ C each brown and white sugar

¼ C each dried apples, apricots, cranberries and raisins reconstituted in 1 T each of Bourbon and water.

¼ tsp each of allspice and cloves

1 tsp each nutmeg and cinnamon

1/2 C each chopped walnuts and chopped chocolate chips.

After rolling, the dough log was cut into 12 equal pieces and placed into a 9”x13” Pyrex baking pan, covered with plastic and put into the fridge to retard overnight.  It should double in volume overnight.  Remove from fridge and brush tops with soft butter.

 Bake off straight from the fridge at 350 F until nicely browned.  Spread cream cheese frosting on top

 Frosting 

8 oz powdered sugar

4 oz each cream cheese and softened butter

½ tsp of vanilla.

 Mix everything together with a hand blender and spread on top of the warm cinnamon rolls.

No, No, No - My apprentice is not a nut!  This is a slightly more simple formula trying to achieve a balance between taste and holes.  Taste always wins out over holes and appearance in my book.  It has to taste good first before going to other wanted crumb and crust attributes.

 Sadly, when throwing boiling water into the hot cast iron skillet, water splashed onto the stone where the bread had just been placed - after sliding it off the peel taking the parchment paper with it.  No problem.  I will just tilt the stone and let the water run off.  But alas, the bread slid off onto the oven rack making a mess of some very nice bread up until that time.  Found a spatula and mooshed it back on the stone as best  we could but was left with a loaf that didn’t spring as well as it should and developed a strange knob hanging off the side of it.

It did taste great though and the WW, Bulgar and hemp sprouts came through and the texture of the crumb was further enhanced with the pistachio nuts and sunflower seeds.  The rye is subtle and WW is pronounced.  The crumb holes were OK even though they suffered the worst of the oven loading and steaming ordeal.  Formula and Method follow the crumb shots.

 Multi-grain SD w/ Multi Sprouts  2 Nuts and Seeds Somewhere 

 Method

 Do the sprouts first by soaking them for 5 hours and then letting them rest on (2) damp paper towels, covered with another and plastic wrap and reserve until needed..

 The  method is similar to recent bakes.  A 3 stage SD levain build only this time the stages were 3 hours apart.  With the AZ kitchen temps hitting90 Fa 9 hour build was more than sufficient to get a strong levain.  Instead of rye based like last time, this one was more WW and AP flour based to fit the bread we were after for this bake.  The dough was more AP Bread flour and White WW than usual to go with the levain.

 We added some honey as it pairs so well with WWW.   Had some Hemp, WW and bulgur sprouting but WW was all that sprouted so the other 2 were a soaker.

 Autolyse the flours, the VWG and the diastatic malt,  all the water, less 10 g, 24 hours in the fridge and retarded the levain for 12 hours, all in hopes of bringing out the sour.  The next morning we kneaded the autolyse and levain with the added 10 g of water by hand  before kneading on KA 2 for 8 minutes with the dough hook.  Added the salt and knead for 2 more minutes on KA 3.

 Transferred the dough to a well oiled bowl since this is a high hydration dough and let rest for 20 minutes.  Do 4 S &F’s on a floured work surface, at 20 minute intervals- about 4-6 turns each depending on how the dough feels.  When it tightened up it was time to stop.  On the 5 th S& F fattened out the dough and incorporated the sprouts and nuts.  Do 1 more S&F for a total of 6.

 Let rest on the counter for 1 hour.  You may need longer if your kitchen isn’t 90 F.  Then refrigerate for 24 hours.  Take the dough out of the fridge and let it warm up for an hour.  Pre-shape by dragging the boule’s skin tight and then let rest for 10 minutes.  Shape and place in your favorite boule final proofing container - mine is a cloth lined basket that is well floured with rice flour and AP mixed 50-50.  But, you can make what ever shape suits your fancy.

 Let bread rise in a plastic bag until it passes the poke test - mine took 2 hours at 86-88 F.  Get oven ready at 500 F with steam and stone 45 minutes before bread is ready to bake.  Turn out of the basket onto parchment and peel, slash your favorite way and place on the stone with steam for 15 minutes turning temperature down to 450 after 5 minutes.   Remove steam and turn oven to 425 F convection and bake until the bread is 205 F in the middle.  Turn off oven and leave bread on the stone for 12 more minutes with oven door ajar to dry out.

 Move to a wire cooling rack to completely cool before cutting.

we thought we would publish our masa recipe that folks seems to love more than others.  It is a little different and just plain delicious. Once you make your own masa, tortillas and tamales, and they don't have to be this fancy, you just won't want to buy them - even though you will.

For a dry mix, we swear by Minsa Corn Masa Harina for Tamales (make sure it is for tamales and not tortillas) made in Muleshoe, Texas - but any will do.  Dry mix may be the most available across the USA so this recipe will use it even though some Brownman have been known to make fresh from hominy on occasion, or buy fresh from the Mexican Mercado.

Masa for Tamales and Tortillas

1 C dry masa harina

3/4 C home made chicken stock - have a little extra in case it is dry - I used 7/8 C total

1/4 C  fat.  (use 1/3 bacon and sausage dripping, 1/3 butter and 1/3 lard)

1/2 tsp salt

2 T of chopped very fine Swiss chard - I grow my own

1/8 tsp each dry peppers; mole, chipotle, arbol, ancho, smoked paprika

1/8 tsp each dried oregano, cumin, coriander

1/4 tsp baking powder

Directions - Mix the fat with the harina by cutting it in with a pasrty cutter.  Add the chicken stock, peppers and spices and mix with a spoon until well combined.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.  For tortillas I use the bottom of 1 qt sauce pan to smash down a golf ball sized ball of masa into a 1/8" thick tortilla.  Do this between two oiled sheets of plastic wrap  if you don't want get mad and want to harm your baking apprentice.  Then gently peel off the top plastic and then peel off the tortilla with the pal side of your hand making sure to overlap only 50% of the tortilla.  Then lay the other 50% of the tortilla in a small dry Teflon pan heated to medium low while releasing the other 50% from your hand.  I make my tamales in banana leaves, corn husks or parchment paper.  These were made in parchment.

With this masa you can make, tacos, tamales, chips and quesadillas - some of which follow in pictures.  Salmon tacos, pork carnitas tamales and chicken  quesadillas.  All were served with; crema and yogurt chipotle roulade, home made; pico de geudo with corn, guacamole, chili tomatillo verde sauce, red pepper sause, mole sauce, chipotle sauce, seasoned cabbage, Mexican dirty green rice  and puerano, pinto, and black beans with smoked pork jowl.

And a little huevos rancheros for breakfast in the morning with chorizo, chipotle roulade and fake YW pretzel bread after sleeping on typical AZ sunset. 

Cinco de mayo sunset, moonrise and dinner.

I wanted to make some YW rolls that had a pretzel twist so we made some pretzel bread crumbs and used them to stick to the outside of some 15% White WW yeast water rolls.   We made some rolls using 4 little balls of dough per roll and some knotted rolls.  All were; retarded overnight, proofed and baked in ramekins.  Also cut the salt in half since the pretzel crumbs were very salty.

The rolls were baked in my mini convection oven with stream and came out nicely browned, blistered, crunchy crusted with a soft moist crumb.  The pretzels were hardly noticeable,  The next time we will use the pretzel crumbs as altus to get more pretzel taste.  Will also enrich the dough with egg, cream and butter to make a nice hamburger bun  for version 2.  Cut in 3rds, toasted and buttered these are pretty tasty.  Formula and method follow the pix's.

Yeast Water Fake Pretzel Rolls

 Build the levain in 3 stages 4 hours each for a total of 12 hours.  Retard the levain 12 hours.

 Mix the flours with the water and autolyse for 12 hours.

 Make pretzel bread crumbs.

 Mix the levain and the autolyse with the salt for 6 minutes on KA 3.  Move to an oiled plastic wrap covered bowl and rest for 20 minutes.  Do the first of 6 S & F’s on a lightly floured surface at 20 minute interval returning to the covered oiled bowl.  After last S & F let ferment in the oiled bowl on the counter for 1 hour  Form into knots or roll of your choice, 4 balls  ( I did some of each).  Dunk individual balls or or bow ties into pretzel breadcrumbs and place in (6) ramekins covered in plastic wrap - then refrigerate 12 hours or overnight.

 Remove from fridge and let come to room temp.  Once rolls have doubled in size from the time they went into the fridge they are ready to bake -  mine took about 2 hours.

 I baked mine in my Cuisinart mini oven with a 1 cup Pyrex cup half full of water in the back and I threw ½ C of boiling water in the bottom.  Pre heat oven at 500 F regular bake.  Put rolls in and steam for 10 minutes.  Remove steam, turn down to 400 F convection  and bake for 5 more minutes.  Remove from ramekins and bake for 5 more minutes or so until center reaches 205 F.   Move to cooling rack until room temperature.  

After baking several white, or nearly so, YW and SD breads in French styles, I wanted to go back to my favorite breads to make and eat (and re-stock the freezer) - rye based multi grain SD breads that were at least 50% whole grains with rye sprouts,  rye scald (with red rye malt), some Borodinski altus, some caraway, flax and pepitas (pumpkin) seeds.

The levain was retarded for 12 hours after a 12 hour 3 stage build.  The flours were autolysed for 24 hours in the fridge and then after development and ferment the dough was retarded for 24 hours too - all to try to bring out the sour.

The bread came out with a nice thick dark crust that went chewy as it cooled.  The crumb was fairly open, soft and moist.  It tasted very sour and was delicious plain, with butter or toasted with butter.  I really like this bread very much. it is delicious,  and the best I have baked for awhile - the slashing was a little odd as usual.  Method and formula follow the pixs.

 Method

 Levain - Make the levain in 3 builds over 4 hours each – 12 hour - then retard 12 hours in the fridge for 24 hrs total. Then immediately

 Put the flours in a small bowl with the flax and caraway seeds (5 geach) and the white rye malt.  Add all the water except 40 g.  Mix well, cover with plastic and autolyse in the fridge for 24 hours

 Start the rye sprouts by soaking them for 5 hours.  Drain and spread over damp 2 paper towels, cover with another and then cover with plastic wrap and leave covered until needed.  When needed the rye seeds will have sprouted

 Start the scald buy placing the rye seeds in a small sauce pan, add the red rye malt and just cover with water.  Bring to a boil and then simmer until the water is gone but the mix is still wet.  Transfer to a small bowl and put in the fridge until needed.

 Dough -The next day 1 hour before needed take the scald, autolyse and levain out of the fridge to warm up.  Place the autolyse in the mixing bowl.  Add the40 g of water to the flour and work it into the flour autolyse  by squeezing through fingers with your hands. What fun! Once the water is absorbed add the levain and work it in the same way.

 With dough hook knead on KA 2 for 4 minutes, add salt. molasses and VWG and then mix on KA 3 for 2 minutes – 6 minutes total.  Transfer to an oiled bowl cover with plastic and let rest for 20 minutes.  Do 8 S&F’s on a floured surface and return to oiled covered bowl.  Do 3 more S&F’s (4 folds each of floured surface) on 20 minute intervals.  Add the sprouts, Borodinskialtusand25 gof pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and do 2 more S&Fs on  20 minute intervals.  Form into a ball, place in oiled bowel can cover with plastic.  Let is for 45 minutes and then place in fridge for retard overnight – 20 hrs or so.  It will double overnight.

 Take out of the fridge and let rest on counter to warm up for 1 ½ hours in the morning.  Pre-shape into boule and let rest 10 minutes.  Shape into boule making sure to stretch the skin tight by dragging boule across a non floured work surface.  Place seam side up in cloth lined and floured basket (I use half rice flour and half AP).  Pinch seams closed and flour top.  Place in a trash can liner and let rise until it nearly doubles and passes the poke test.  About 3 hours.  At the 2 hour mark:

 Bake: Pre-heat oven to 500 F no fan with steaming method in place.  Place parchment and peel on basket and turn over to de-mold.  Flour if you want, slash and slide into oven onto the stone.  After 4 minutes, turn oven down to450 F.  Continue steaming for 16 more minutes, then remove steam and turn down oven to 425 F convection this time.  Bake until middle of loaf reaches 205 F - about 32 more minutes.  Turn off oven and leave door ajar and leave bread on stone to crisp the skin.  After 12 minutes move boule to wire cooling rack.

This lunch was made with the 20% whole grain baggies.  After a busy weekend doing nothing much, it was nice to have some ready made sammy materials to use for lunch.  This YW bread was made for flavor as opposed for holes.  It came out of the freezer in good shape.

Had some left over grilled Japanese eggplant to go with leftover Holiday Ham, last nights salad, half a tomato, last of the brie cheese, home made Dijon mustard and some mayo.

After the Sammy was piled high, a couple of different home made pickles, a lovely left over polenta made with garbanzo flour instead of corn, Parmesan, Pecorino, Feta, Swiss chard, chipotle pepper and sun dried tomato.  Pink Lady apple slices left over from feeding the YW, (I wonder why there are no Brownmen apples to go wih the Pink Ladies - they must be lonely), some sliced carrots, olives and a dolop of the last of some home made hot sauces (red and green mixed) at one end of the polenta.  A very nice leftover lunch to remember.

After the last bake's attempt for flavor instead of holes, this bake was for baguette holes.  I also had some hemp seeds burning a hole in my pocket so thought they would be appropriate.  Burning, burning holes, holes and hemp are baggie proof and go way back to SF in the early 70's as far as I can personally attest.

I wanted to use txfarmer's 36 hour baguette method for a new variation that was different from all of her many variations.  The holes she produces with this recipe, in all of its forms, are amazing - and holes were the main goal today.  I wanted a new variation and Hanseata's Hemp seeds (scalded and then soaked for 4 hours) were the ticket.  I want to thank them both for their inspiration.  I did use a slightly different method by retarding the levain for 12 hours too, to go along with the 24 hour autolyse.  Was trying to get more SD flavor and hoped for holes with this extra levain retard.  The previous bake of 20% rye and WW had much better, deeper and lingering SD flavor - the taste of the bread was just better overall and more akin to my personal preference.

Got a nice crust with some blisters, some ears, some glossy holes, nice nutty taste from the hemp seeds, nice SD twang along  some very poor slashing on one baguette as is usual for me.  I give this bake an 87  or B+. Recipe follows pix.  Use txfarmer's method and just retard the levain too.

The bread was more sour today and I am adding another crub shot of the lunch shot that follows.  Bologna with  cheddar cheese and greens, salad, a brie wedge, a radish, carrot and jicama sticks, olives, tomato, some refried black and red beans.  Sorry for the smudge on the lens - never photograph while you eat!  Took Dopey out of the title too since this bread isn't.

Seeds not included in weights or percents calculated off of them. 

Today we had a wonderful breakfast and lunch thanks to sweetbird's fine bread that had pistachios and soba noodles added to it by a 'butcher' or as Varda says a 'postmodernist'.  When toasted, this bread, like most, takes on a new life that is hearty and modern too.

As a classic smoked salmon, grilled chicken, tomato and basil feta cheese, lettuce and mushroom masterpiece - rarely attempted by the most professional sandwich artisan, this bread comes into its own saying 'You Know I Ain't No Slimy White Slice Sweetbird'

The original blog is here aand where you find the link to sweetbird's fine recipe on her blog :

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28081/dabrownman-butchers-sweetbird%E2%80%99s-lovely-buckwheat-apple-and-apple-cider-buckwheat-groat-br

With some fresh pineapple, strawberry, bread and butter, kosher dill and Serrano pickles, a slice of brie and some corn chips with jicama and corn salsa - this lunch is terrific on any spring day that nears 100 F in the shade.

The other half of the puff paste we made the other day was used up on these tasty apple, pear  and cream cheese sleds.  This time I watched them to make sure these didn't over caramelize like the last variety.  I mixed in some apple jam in the cream cheese that is on the bottom and hidden.  Also, we reconstituted dried apricots, raisins and cranberries in some bourbon and also added fresh minced ginger to the chopped apples and pears that were sauted with some brown sugar and mixed spice.   The middle of the sled was docked to keep it from puffing and make a well / seat for the riders on the sled :-)

Yeast water multi-grain baggies, toasted with butter, apple ginger jam and homemade sage hot breakfast sausage on top.  Served with a springy yeast water strawberry pancake, maple syrup and over easy egg.  Throw in some nice coffee and breakfast becomes something special on a spring weekday.