I had read on Chowhound in a 2003 post that Puritan Bakery in Carson, CA supplies most notable SoCal burger chains (including InNOut, Fatburger, and Tommy's, among others) with their buns.
Interesting article in last week's Orange County Register about Puritan & their process:
From "The secret behind SoCal's best burgers" by Nancy Luna
Sometimes two + two = five, and you roll with it.
Reading a thread earlier today got me looking at the book "Bread Builders", including a section about about L. sanfranciscensis and dental plaque. Very weird. This got me thinking about some travel show I saw (Bourdain? Zimmern?) I saw a while back, where the host drank chicha somewhere in South America.
Sure, starters get going in all kinds of ways: wholegrain flours, whole fruit, pineapple juice. Now I've been reading with interest about fruit waters lately.
So I've been baking breads for some years now and experimenting with various recipes.
Today I've been working on these English Muffins as well as my version of Theresa Greenway's Griffin's Bread.
The versions I'm making are 62% and 68% hydrations respectively.
Most of the time I use a KA mixer with C-hook to knead.
In researching another thread, came across this interesting article on preferments from Lallemand, in PDF format.
One interesting morsel:
The preferment minimizes the lag phase by providing an optimum environment for the yeast. The result is higher gas production later inthe process, especially in high-sugar doughs.
So I've been poring over some older TFL posts on autolyse, as well as other web sites.
The traditional definition of autolyse means that only flour and water are combined to enhance flour hydration and gluten formation, with a host of other benefits.
So in a recent thread I posted a recipe that I based on a bread someone had seen on TV. I just did my best guess, based on provided ingredients and my own experience.
I figured I should post the results, because it was mostly theoretical, but I believed it would work. The goal was yeasty, soft, fluffy bread, and use of a preferment.
Here's the recipe, makes eight (8) 92g rolls/buns, or one good-sized loaf of bread...hence BreadBuns!
So last night I set off on my first Pita adventure using the TFL recipe.
I like weight/percentages, so I weighed out the measured ingredients to develop a formula by weight. This is my conversion technique pretty much for all baking now.
The original recipe was much too sticky for me as well (worked out to ~68% total hydration for me); had to add 50g more flour to get a manageable dough, and even then it was a tad bit wet. Overall hydration of 59-61% seems to be in the right ballpark for pita.
The below recipe is ~60% overall hydration:
I make a 60% rye bread, and I use a buttermilk & rye soaker. Hydration is around 65%; remainder of flour is generic bread flour. I knead in a Kitchenaid for about 7-10 minutes total. I also stretch and fold 2-4 times, depending on how lazy I am.
The unbaked dough of the last 2 I've made starts to "rip" after I start to fold it. I doubt I could windowpane it. Is that typical? I know rye is low-gluten, but could I be overkneading it? Seems unlikely, but I'm looking forward to feedback.
Thanks!
