Friday Food Finds
Edition 9
If ever there was a theme for these editions of Friday Food Finds, this week’s would be baking with (instant) yeast. Though don’t be dismayed if you’re not into baking bread; I’ve interspersed these yeasted bakes with a couple of related recipes that I hope will inspire you to get to your kitchen.
I started my week resuming my somewhat forgotten effort to pinpoint a soft sandwich loaf recipe for my family. I’ve been focused on milk bread1 for a while now and went back to it again this week, trying out this recipe for Whole Wheat Hokkaido Milk Bread from Sejal Gupta Chakrapani at The Crumb Stories. I truly love adding whole grain flours to many of the breads and pastries I bake, and recently replenished my stash of whole wheat flour with a bag from Ground Up Grain in North Hadley, MA.
This bread did not disappoint and I appreciated that the recipe provided vegan alternatives to all of the dairy. I think the recipe method could be streamlined a little though, and I would have liked to see a little more detail in places. Nonetheless, the bread was as promised: soft, springy, and a little denser than a milk bread made with 100% all-purpose flour. It was a little sweet for sandwich bread I think (great for breakfast toast), so next time I would reduce the sugar to 2 or 3 tablespoons.
Testing notes: I used my stand mixer to develop and knead the dough — I do enjoy kneading by hand, but sometimes it’s nice to have your hands free to tackle other tasks. It took about 10 minutes to fully develop the dough in the mixer. The only other improvisation I made was to guess on the size of the pan. I used a 9” pain de mie or pullman pan, since the recipe stipulated that it needed to have tall sides, but I think a standard 8 1/2” by 4 1/2” loaf pan would have worked fine.
Supporting my last-minute dinner decision on Monday afternoon, these Hamburger Buns from Breadtopia were quick-ish to throw together and well received by the whole family. We enjoyed them with Melissa Rubel Jacobson’s (from Food & Wine) Ginger-Sesame Pork Burgers with Slaw, which, despite some flair-ups on the grill, made for a tasty meal.
The buns were soft, springy, and dense — not too dissimilar from the milk bread actually. They were nice and sturdy for the burgers and juicy slaw, yet not at all too chewy. I think I only added 1 teaspoon of salt (in haste), and would have appreciated that second teaspoon.
Testing notes: To make the buns, I used 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 3 cups of all-purpose flour in place of the bread flour. The dough was tacky, but not overly sticky or difficult to handle. When shaping the buns, I felt like 2 1/2 ounces was on the small side for the 1/4-pound burgers I had made, so I shaped them into 4-ounce buns. Then finally, before baking, I brushed the buns with milk (again, in haste) instead of the optional egg wash. This resulted in some pretty pale, not so shiny buns at the fully-baked (15-minute) mark. My solution? Turn on the broiler and make the tops extra dark. Yup, I would not skip the egg if I made these again.
As for the burgers, I started with just 1 pound of ground pork, so I did my best to scale the recipe accordingly. Our pork was quite fatty, which caused the flair-ups, and I think resulted in our burgers being a little dry. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the meal, and just to be on the safe side, I smeared the buns with a little mayonnaise. I did not have coleslaw mix, so I made my own with finely sliced red cabbage and grated carrots. Overall, I really enjoyed the medley of flavors in this recipe.
I’ll leave you this week with a couple of recipes that I had mixed success making (likely through no fault of the recipes themselves). The first was for Candied Orange Peels from Lisa Bryan at Downshiftology. I think I’ve only ventured to make candied peel once before, and I don’t have great memories of it going well. Overall, Lisa’s recipe made the process very approachable. The finished candied peels came out sweet and zesty, though a little harder to bite into than I would like.
Testing notes: Lisa has you blanching (boiling and draining) the orange peel twice. Several of the other recipes I looked at suggested the same. However, I tasted a small piece of a peel after the second blanch and it was still too bitter for my taste, so I went for a 3rd and 4th round. At that point the bitterness was gone, and the citrus/orange notes were more prominent. Also, when it came to simmering the peels in syrup, I think I went about 5 minutes too long. Some of the peels on the bottom of the pan crystallized with the sugar, and I think simmering for less time would have avoided that and likely made the peels a little softer.
Which brings me to my final recipe of the week: Mary Berry’s Hot Cross Buns. These are the reason I even ventured down the path of making orange peels to begin with, but as you might guess from the photo above, that extra effort did not exactly pay off.
Having had great success with this recipe last year (resulting in soft, rich, beautifully flavored buns), I went into making this year’s batch with a lot of confidence (arguably too much). I certainly was not anticipating dense pucks of unleavened dough.
So what went wrong? Well, I’m still working on figuring that out, but I think there are a couple of culprits at play. First, my yeast is tired. I knew that going into making these, but figured with my successful bread baking earlier in the week, I’d be alright. I did not account for the extra richness of the dough and the hefty amount of cinnamon (yeast and cinnamon are not the best of friends) I added to it. The second issue at play I think was the hydration of the dough. I added all of the milk when I likely could have held back on a good tablespoon or two of it.
My poor judgement here led me to a dough that hardly budged during both phases of fermentation (rising), and a topping that was impossibly runny. But I’ve learned my lesson, and I may go back for a second round this weekend to redeem myself. You’ll hear about it next week if I do!
And that does it for this 9th edition of Friday Food Finds. If you’re observing a holiday this weekend, may that find you among family, friends, and enjoying some delicious food. Enjoy!
Bread made from a cooked, pre-gelatinized flour and water and/or milk paste known as Yudane in Japan and Tangzhong in China.