Reproducing a 1970s Midwestern Kaiser Roll

Growing up in the Midwest in the 70s, we would get these awesome Kaiser Rolls from a local Germany bakery. I'm trying to reproduce them, after giving up on finding similar rolls either in the US or Germany. They may have been unique to the bakery, they are definitely unlike any modern Kaiser roll I've run across.

The rolls had a unique vaguely sour-like or nutty flavor, that's hard to describe. They were not overly brown in color, more of a light tan, had a nice chewy crust, and a fairly dense interior and even crumb.

So far, I've tried using combinations including using an ale barm for leavening, a lager yeast for leavening, barley malt syrup, milk, cream, touch of vinegar, 15% rye flour, and so on. Although the test rolls have been very good, they are still missing the flavor or the original.

I'm currently making a batch with 25% spelt flour and some lard. I wonder if the original rolls had a bit of potato, or an unique leavening process.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or knowledge of techniques a basic 1970s midwestern German bakery might have been using?

I'm also interested, though can't help with your specific request. You might try adding some dextrose, it wasn't in your list of permutations. Do you think they might have been using "first clear" flour? One of the projects I had in mind for a future time, was Kaiser rolls, though I would have to make mine sans milk products for health reasons, so I'd substitute some other fat source. I taught myself how to fold them by hand using a piece of circular paper. It's kind of tricky until you do that, looking at various diagrams of how they are folded by hand was just confusing, after the paper practice it seems more like tucking and folding your bed blankets, well, at least the last fold. Good luck!

Thanks, I'll try dextrose, I've got some. My next ingredient will be instant potato flakes. I'm now pretty sure the original rolls had lard after tasting the most recent batch. This was very much a working class bakery, not a fancy place.

Here's the recipe for test batch 7, a modification of a recipe of a Milwaukee german baker from that era, Gordon King:

1.5 C water

.5 C heavy cream

2 t salt

4 T diluted ale barm, rinsed

bread flour sufficient to make not-stiff dough

.75 t barley malt syrup

2 t brown sugar

2 T freshly made pork lard

mix everything except 2 C flour, hold chilled 12+ hrs, rise 2x, add remaining flour, rise 2x again, form 3 oz balls, proof, spray with water, bake at 450 with steam 10 min then 350 no steam 10 more min.

The original Gordon King hard roll recipe has no dairy, you might try it out:

http://archive.jsonline.com/features/recipes/145709925.html

I'm going to try to include a picture of that last batch. Also, I forgot there were 2.5 egg whites in the recipe, whipped stiff.

rolls

Those look appetizing! Nice color! And thanks for the hard roll recipe, I filed it away where I can easily find it. I was curious as to why you used only egg whites (whipped), are you having issues with rising using washed ale yeast? Precisely which ale yeast are you using? (there are so many of them!) In brewing, I'm a fan of California Ale Yeast, and Safale-05, though if I lived where ambient temperatures were different, I might not be such a fan. Mostly, I throw the primary fermentation yeast cake away, I've had sanitation failures with washing then reusing yeast, I'm not a fan of sour brews. When I've used egg whites in lean breads my perception was that they have a drying effect, sort of unpleasant to the palate. I have found use for yolks in several different formulas, it is the yolk which has the emulsifier lecithin, and emulsifiers are rather common dough conditioners. I was truly impressed with the results of whole egg (whites and yolks mixed together) at 1.25% of the flour weight in pizza dough (before I realized I couldn't eat cheese), which is a rather small amount, by mass, less than a typical amount of salt. I didn't notice much if any crumb coloring.

The egg whites were only used in this one batch, because I'd seen recipes that included them so I wanted to test it. The batch after that one used a whole egg, and I liked how that worked better. I'm not sure if I'll keep egg of any kind, I'm still searching for the "magic bullet" for flavor.

I don't know the yeast variety, it was provided by the friendly brewer at a local brewery. I could ask. I rinsed it to minimize any hops flavor, and because the 1875 report said they were using yeast that they had rinsed. So far, I've found they yeast to be very active any easy to work with, although some early batches did take a long time rising, but no off flavors.

Pork lard

I have some commercially prepared pork lard, which is also going into the current batch. In the future, I plan to try a bit of bacon grease, and a higher salt level. The missing flavor isn't sour, it is possibly cheese like or like mild white pepper like flavor, but hard to describe. Perhaps I'll try some hard cheese too. And it is always possible the flavor from a special yeast they used.

Regarding pizza, you can make some pretty epic pizzas without cheese.

It was the first world-applauded sweet-fermented bread. Horsford did indeed say the formula used half water and half milk. Regarding ale yeast, it's great to know that it worked reasonably well to raise your dough, thanks! Farmhouse ales are reported to have peppery notes using WLP565, particularly when fermented at temperatures well above 80°F. One other area of taste experimentation to consider would be "yeast food." I mean a dough additive for yeast' benefit. There are a number of different formulas sold, judging by some searches I performed a few years ago. I've never used them, generally I prefer long-fermented sponge & dough techniques, and using high quality dry bread yeast, but yeast foods may skew flavor slightly. I understand most successful commercial bakers used straight-dough techniques, with faster fermentations, at least before the advent of the robotized bread factory. Several years ago, I purchased some lard at the local Hispanic market. The label said it had BHT in it, it was not refrigerated and in spite of the ingredient BHT it tasted quite rancid. I talked to my butcher friend at the same store, was there a better lard available? They run a little taco shop as well. He sold me some which came in a large cardboard box which they kept in their cooler, wrapped it in plastic, and put a weight and price label on it. Big difference, nice and fresh. Thanks for the tip on no-cheese pizzas! There's no substitute for a NY-style thin-crust cheese & pepperoni pizza! Humor with a kernel of truth aside, my main point was about the small amount of yolk required for an emulsification effect. I believe Harold McGee was able to make almost 6 gallons of mayonnaise with a single egg yolk!

Franz Joseph. Somehow the Germans latched onto them, stole the whole deal and named them after the Kaiser:-)

I don't know know how authentic the German Bakery was but Vienna Rolls don't usually have any milk or cream in them. Lard or Crisco was the fat of choice with whole eggs and there was some sweetener in there too - a bit of white sugar, barley malt syrup, brown sugar and or malt in some combination would work.

Lucy's Kaiser rolls look like this and she as German as any German Bread Baking Apprentice 2nd Class can be. Maybe Karin (hanseata) will chime in with her thoughts from Hamburg / Maine

750 g bread flour

435 g water

100g eggs.

30 g of sugar, brown sugar or BM Syrup

3 g of diastatic malt

30 g of leaf lard or Crisco

2% salt.

Good luck

Thanks, i'll give it a try. It is somewhat similar to my most recent batch, ingredients below. All test batches have been very well received by friends and neighbors, but I'm still working to get the flavor of the midwestern roll of my elementary school lunch box.

475 g water
120 g whole raw milk
56 g instant potato flakes
15 g salt
10 g barley malt syrup
24 g homemade pork lard
56 g spelt flour
50 g egg, beaten
bread flour sufficient to make fairly sticky dough

The Kaiser Roll has probably evolved over time in terms of ingredients. The 1867 roll included dairy, using 50% water and 50% milk for liquid, according this 1875 report:

https://books.google.com/books?id=6jRDAAAAIAAJ