Friday, August 13, 2010

Sausage Buns

I love light and fluffy hot dog and hamburger buns, but sausages seem to warrant a heftier bun. These would also be nice for sub sandwiches. If there are leftovers, they'd be great sliced, toasted, and used for crostini.

This recipe makes just six buns, so it's good for a small family. Or double it, if you want more.

The reason you need to scald the milk is that milk has an enzyme that can affect the protein in the flour and thus affect the rise. It's not always fatal to the bread, and it's much less likely to be needed with modern pasteurized mild - as opposed to the fresh from-the-cow milk that was more common years ago.

But scalding is extra insurance, and it changes the flavor of the milk a little bit. If you scald the milk, takes a little extra time since you then need to cool it, but in this recipe I accelerated the cooling by adding cold water to the warm milk.

Sausage Buns

2/3 cups milk, scalded
1/3 cup cold water
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 cups (11 1/4 ounces) bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Put the scalded milk in the bowl of your food processor and add the cold water. It's still probably too warm for the yeast, so let it sit until it has cooled to lukewarm. Add the sugar and yeast and stir to dissolve. Let it sit until it is frothy and bubbly.

Add the flour and knead with the dough hook until it starts becoming elastic.Add the salt and olive oil, and continue kneading until the dough is smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky.

Form the dough into a ball, return it to the bowl, and drizzle with olive oil to coat it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside until the dough has doubled in size, about an hour (or less).

Punch the dough down, form it into a ball again, cover the bowl with plastic wrap again, and set aside until it has doubled again, about 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and sprinkle some cornmeal onto a baking sheet.

Flour your work surface lightly, and knead the dough briefly, then divide it into 6 roughly equal pieces. Personally, I don't mind if there are slightly different sizes, but if you want them more precise, you can weigh and portion them exactly.

Form each piece into a log about 6 inches long, and place them on the pan, leaving room for them to rise. Cover the buns with plastic wrap, and set aside to rise until they are doubled, about 30 minutes.

Slash each bun down the center lengthwise, and bake at 350 degrees until they are nicely golden brown, about 35 minutes.

Move the buns to a rack to cool. If you prefer a soft crust, cover the buns with a clean kitchen towel as they cool.

This has been submitted to Yeastspotting.
Yum

1 comment:

Mimi said...

I've been wanting to make sandwich buns for awhile. These look great!

Thanks for the information on the milk, I had no idea that it had an enzyme that could be affecting the outcome of my baking.

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