Fast and Easy Hot Dog Buns.

I have this thing for buns at the moment. No idea why. It's just one of those "I want" kinda things.

Anyway, I have been having a real hankering for some fast food lately. Mickey D's, Kentucky Freud Chicken, etc - but I really don't like how unwell it makes one feel after eating it. Excessive salt, excessive fat and really - for what it's worth - limited flavour and huge prices.

How to get around this? Easy! Home made hot dogs!

I confess that commercial frankfurters (or what is passed off as a frank at supermarkets) are pretty tasteless, full of preservatives and overall, not that wholesome and healthy at all. However, as a hot dog with fried onions, cheese, hot mustard and some ketchup (real ketchup - not 'tomato sauce') they become a thing of yummy mysticism. Fast and easy feed on a winter afternoon.

You decide how you want your dogs - I'm just going to show you how to make the buns!

Quick'n'easy Hot Dog Buns:

First up, this is a back-to-front recipe when it comes to making the dough. This recipe is designed for people who use a dough-capable piece of machinery, but not a bread maker. If you already make bread by hand, then you know what to do and I won't waste time telling you.

This is a potato bread. Those lovely little buns that were praised so highly in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle are potato bread. You can go nuts with the recipe for that exact type if you want - use your Google-fu. This is something a bit different.


* 125 ml warm water in the machine chamber
* 2 tablespoons yeast
* 1 tablespoon white sugar
** Mix well on lowest speed for about two or three minutes to get some oxygen into the mix and help those yeasties reproduce.
* Allow this to sit while you peel a medium potato, boil it and mash it with a little milk to make a sloppy potato mash.
* Break two eggs into the yeast mixture.
* Add the quantity of potato mash
** Mix well on lowest speed for a couple of minutes. This evens out the temperature of the mix.
* Add flour. It will be somewhere over 550 grams. You will need to use your experience with your machine to be your guide here as to what is enough or too much. Being a wettish dough, it's easy to go too far either way. Experiment. Have fun.
* Lightly oiled bowl, warm place, cover with cling wrap, wait twenty minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.
* Don't knock it down! Just turn it out onto a well floured work surface and divide it into eight pieces.
* Shape those pieces into hot dog bun shape and place in a medium to tall sided baking pan, lined with lightly oiled greaseproof paper.
* Allow to rise twenty minutes more.
* Preheat your oven to 180C fan forced.
* Sprinkle a little olive oil on top, spray lightly with water, decorate with sesame seeds, spray a bit more heavily with water.
* Bake fifteen minutes or until nicely coloured up on top.
* Cool on a rack for around twenty minutes before separating for storage or eating.

This makes for a reasonably damp kind of bun. If you like them to be less wet, increase the cooking time to 18 or even twenty minutes. The lack of punching down and kneading ahead of shaping leaves a fairly coarse bubble structure in the bread which is great for soaking up all those yummy sauces.

Enjoy!!

Cheers!!

It's Cider-tastic!

Recently, we went for a bit of 4WD fun with some mates up through the Bells Line of Road, taking in Bilpin.

If you don't already know, Bilpin is pretty famous for apples. Many, many different varieties.

However, we were a bit late in the season so I expected less kinds to be available. In fact, there was only one kind and at the time of day we went through there was only one kind to be had. I don't even know what kind it is to be certain. However, at the price, the quality is excellent has made for some exceptional eating.

I bought the apples with a view to making cider. Delicious apple cider!

So, we grabbed about 12 kilos of apples which co-incidentally produced around 6 litres of premium grade juice, with the real ever-so-slightly golden-amber hue that was in real, fresh apple juice so long ago.


Here's the recipe:
** Common Cider
* 24 litres apple juice (6 litres freshly made, 18 litres Aldi)
* 1 x S-04 yeast
* Ferment until SG is stable
* Bottle, adjusting the priming dose to your preferred level of carbonation
* Cellar / mature for at least two weeks. Longer is better.
* OG = 1048


And here's some notes for you to consider for when you try this:

* Juice:
Apples nominally produce 40 - 55% juice by volume compared to weight. In other words, you will get about 4 - 5.5 litres of juice from ten kilos of apples. Smaller apples, less juice. These were fairly large eating apples just past their 'looks good' prime.

* Pasteurisation / anti-microbe warfare:
Apples, for the most part are reasonably clean. However, as with any fruit or vegetable they are likely to have been sprayed with some form of pesticide. You must wash them well to assist in removing any residue which may be on the skins.

Not all apples are picked from the trees. Some have fallen. Most orchards use some kind of fertiliser and often it's chook poo (chicken droppings for those of you who don't speak Australian). Chook poo is particularly nasty, biologically speaking, and can harbour some rather deadly bugs.

In addition, there may be wild yeasts living in or on the apple. These may be undesirable for your fermentation. In the case of this recipe, they're undesirable.

What to do? Pasteurise!

Cut and juice your apples as you would normally to make fruit juice to drink. Put the total amount of freshly made juice into a large pot and heat to only 75C. Allow it to cool with a well-fitting lid on the pot. Pasteurisation complete.

Prior to adding the juice to the fermenter, skim off the crud. There is a thick layer of foamy brown stuff on top. The crud won't make your cider taste or look good. Skim it reasonably well. The rest will either drop out in the fermenter or float to the top. Floc up or down, so to speak.

The other option which some people prefer is Campden tablets or sodium metabisuplhite. This has been a reasonably common way of achieving the same effect as pasteurisation and lends itself to some other production methods. However, I'm not a fan because sometimes a sulphur aroma remains for quite some months after bottling.

* Not enough apples?
Go buy some preservative free apple juice. Aldi sells two litre for around $1.80-something at the time of writing. You could even use 100% commercial juice. Think of it this way - you will make 30 x 750 ml cider for about $22 plus yeast. Bargain! Cost at a bottle shop? $195.00 for a rather good one or about $1.35 for something less special.

* Why S-04 yeast?
It's a matter of personal preference. I chose S-04 because I like a little bit of residual sweetness in my ales and cider. You could use S-05 which will give a dryer result. However, according to some folk who have used it, the S-05 can result in too dry a finish and in some cases ferment to SG=<1.000. YMMV, etc.

There are other speciality yeasts from White Labs and Wyeast. Choose what you would prefer to be drinking.


Best of luck on your cidery adventure!

Cheers!!

BBQ Pork Buns

As you know, I prepared a large pork belly and it has been very tasty so far.

Utterly delicious, to be quite frank. The chilli in the marinade has started to shine through more and there's still a mild cola taste to it. I wish that I had been able to take to to the BBQ - t'would indeed have been a favourite for most.

I wanted to make bread on Sunday but thought to try my hand at BBQ pork buns - Char Siu Pau/Bao (it can be written many ways, depending on dialect).

Here's how!

* Start with a standard bread dough:
- 500 gms plain flour
- 1 tablespoon dry yeast
- Around 350 ml water (adjust as necessary)
- Knead or machine it as per your choice to make a fine grained bread dough.
- Rise as normal (lightly oiled bowl, cling wrap, non-draughty location, etc).

* After the rising, don't punch it down.
* Cut the dough ball in half and roll into long thick ropes.
* Cut each one into rounds, about 40 - 50 mm thick.
* Roll each one flat but still around 3 mm thick.
* Fill with whatever meat, meat and beg, veg combo you like.
* Put each one on small square of baking / grease prooof paper.
* Commence second rising.
* Set up your steamer (a word on steamers follows)
* When the dough looks risen and plump but before it begins to collapse or leak, put the buns in the steamer for ten minutes.
* You can eat fresh or freeze for later.

Reheating these is easy. You need around one minute for two buns in a 1000W microwave. It's up to you to test and make the right decision. Time decreases to around 1:50 for four buns. If you lightly spray or drizzle a little water on the buns as you put them into the microwave, they will be almost as nice as freshly made. Good tasty breakfast stuff.


Just a word on steamers:

If you have a proper stainless steel double layer one like the one in the photo (being uploaded soon - sorry - am busy), you're more than well equipped.

However, if you're a bamboo steamer kind of person, you will probably need two in order to cook the whole lot at the same time.

If you're planning on cooking them in two batches, start boiling your water earlier so that the first batch will be almost perfectly risen and the second batch will be just past perfect rising.


Experiment and you will know your kitchen equipment well.


Cheers!!

Beer in North Korea

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8115677.stm

Now if only they could strike at the world outside their borders with a truly tasty brew instead of weapons, perhaps they would become beloved trade partners for all instead of sanctioned.

/politics.

Cheers!!

Fear not the beer belly!

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25738481-2,00.html

Seems that it's weight gain related genetics, not drinking lots of yummy beer that puts on the paunch.

Eat, drink and be merry!

Cheers!!

BBQ Coca-cola pork belly - Asian Style!

There's nothing better than a beer and a BBQ - and a pork belly!

I know - this article has nothing to do with yeast - just with wholesome flavoursome tasty goodness.

Pork belly is one of those budget cuts of meat as it's rather fatty and doesn't really correspond much to 'standard' Aussie cooking. It was popular in traditional English and European cooking and it's still a major mainstay of Asian dishes as it's actually a really flexible ingredient and is utterly delicious if it's handled well.

I prepared this one for a BBQ at a mate's place, but regrettably didn't go owing to my wife coming down with regular flu / common cold and not wanting to infect everyone else there.

It's a twice-cooked dish - a guarantee of extra special tasty goodness. Once in the oven - once on the BBQ to pick up extra flavours.


Here's how you do it:
* A big piece of pork belly - say >2.5 and <3.5 kg - as long as it will fit your biggest baking dish. It's better if it has the skin on and the rib bones in. That way you get two yummy dishes from one slab of meat.
* A huge baking dish
* 2 - 3 litres of cola
* 1 cinnamon stick
* 2 star anise

- Preheat your oven to 180C fan forced
- Put the pork belly into the baking dish, cover it with the cola as deep as possible and slowly bring it to the boil on the stove top.
- Put the cinnamon stick and star anise into the liquid
- Cook for 2.5 hours or until it's nice and tender. The skin will toughen and may burn a little - it's not important as you will be discarding it.

In the meanwhile, make the marinade:
* 500 grams white sugar
* 200 ml Chinkiang Vinegar (brown vinegar from any Asian grocer - more if you want a sharper taste, up to 400 ml)
* 3 tablespoons crushed dried chilli (you may want to add up to eight or ten if you want more chilli flavour, or use four or five fresh strong chillies for more of a kick)
* 2 cinnamon sticks
* 150 gm Lee Kum Kee char siu sauce (any brand will be OK, but this one is very reliable)
* 80 gm Hoi Sin sauce
* 100 ml of a premium oyster sauce (cheap ones are too salty and not 'oystery' enough).

- Put the sugar into a heavy based saucepan and add enough water to make a thick paste
- Cook over a medium to high heat, stirring often, until it becomes a pale golden colour. If you add too much water, you will end up with sugar syrup and will need to boil it down until it thickens - and it won't go gold, so you will miss out on the caramel flavours.
- Remove from heat and let cool about five minutes.
- VERY carefully add the vinegar. If the sugar solution is too hot it may explode owing to the temperature difference. Be careful.
- Add the remaining ingredients, mix well, and return to the heat to reduce until it thickens to a similar viscosity as the original sugar syrup / caramel.
- Remove from heat and let cool.

-- When the pork is done, remove it from the oven, discard the cooking liquid and let the pork cool down a bit.
- If you are going to BBQ it the same day, now is a good time to remove the skin and place the pork skin side down into the dish. It should pretty much come off in one piece. If you're preparing this a day or more in advance, leave the skin on and put the pork in the dish, skin side down.
- Pour the marinade over the pork. Cover with cling wrap and allow it to rest in the fridge for a few hours.
- The final cooking stage is about ten minutes either side on the BBQ, basting frequently with the marinade. You may want to BBQ longer or shorter depending on your preference.
- With a large knife, cut the ribs away from the slab of meat and serve.
- Slice the meat slab thinly, plate it, drizzle a little extra marinade on top and garnish with green chilli. Yummo!

It is quite possible to not BBQ it and serve as above. Warm out of the oven it's almost irresistible. If there are leftovers, you can refrigerate and consume much the same as cold cuts. Microwaved until warm and then served in slices with a dipping sauce of soy sauce and freshly cut chilli it's a fast and tasty side dish.

You can also make BBQ Pork Buns with leftovers. Keep some marinade and some meat and I will show you how in the next posting!


Cheers and Beers!!

Otto-keg-cooler

It's a busy week here, so I won't have a chance to get into a useful article for a few days yet.

However, to keep you amused, check out this link:

http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/2009/06/greatest-thing-to-happen-to-beer-since.html

If that's not the coolest use for a wheelie bin / Otto bin I've ever seen... cheap, practical, mobile, quirky. Just pray some smart ass at your next bbq doesn't empty the plates into it.

Cheers!!

Drink like a man...

Here's a fun blog entry which I just found...

Well worth a read... especially the bit about beer.

http://www.getfrank.co.nz/the-10-commandments-for-drinking-like-a-man/


Cheers!!

The joy of krausen.

Krausen? Yes, Krausen. Not the Kraken.

Krausen is a foam which forms on top of the wort once fermentation has commenced. It's usually white or creamy but sometimes is darker depending on the yeast or the wort colour (e.g. a stout can be quite a bit darker, etc). Being that tell-tale sign that fermentation has started, it's a grand assurance that everything is on the right track.

Usually, the signs of fermentation are visible between twelve and forty-eight hours after pitching the yeast. This all depends on the yeast and how you pitch it.

The main signs that fermentation have commenced are:
* krausen
* condensation inside the lid of the fermenter
* bubbling air lock.

Krausen? As above.

Condensation? Yes, because the process is exothermic. If the ambient temperature is say 17C, then there's a good chance that the fermenter will be about 20C.

Bubbling air lock? Yes, CO2 being released by the fermentation has to go somewhere, but atmosphere needs to be excluded. Oxygen at this stage is a bad thing for beer making, as is particulate (dust, etc) or biological (wild yeast, bacteria, insect, etc) contamination.. If it's not bubbling, don't worry - that's usually a sign that there is a leak. However, your fermentation chamber will remain pressure-positive until after you have achieved FG so there is a limited chance of oxidation or contamination. CO2 will still be coming out of solution, for the most part, after FG is achieved.

As long as you have at least one of the three conditions above, there's a very high chance that fermentation is underway.

If after three days from pitching there is limited or no sign of fermentation having commenced, draw off a sample and measure the SG. If there is no change from OG, it would be advisable to pitch a new batch of yeast. If there has been a decrease in SG, then fermentation is taking place albeit slowly.

In general, if your OG is <1080 then a standard pitching, single fermentation in the vessel is adequate. If you're working with higher SG wort, then some special rules come into play but I can tell you more about that another time.

Also, take into consideration the temperature of where your fermenter is sitting. The ideal temperature range for the yeast you're using should be on the packaging or at least available at the supplier's web site. If the temperature is too low, fermentation may either not commence or commence very slowly. If the temperature is too high then fermentation may kick off, perhaps violently, and be very short-lived. A hot fermentation has some negative side-effects, the least of which can be a brutal hangover.


So - why all the talk about the Joy of Krausen?

I feel joyous.

My new batch has krausen.


Cheers!!

Back in the brew.

Well, after a longish hiatus from brewing, I'm back into it and put down my first brew for June.

I hadn't been sure what to start with again as I've been hanging to make some apple cider but haven't been able to find a good, well priced source of apple juice. After all, apple cider is merely apple juice fermented in the same manner as beer, albeit with a different kind of yeast. One of my good friends is somewhat a cider fan, so thought to see what I could make which could tickle his tastebuds. If you happen to know of a good source of bulk, organic, preservative free apple juice then do let me know.

So what did I kick off with? A simple English Ale. ESB - Extra Special Bitter.

Here's the recipe:
* 500 g cracked Carapils steeped at 78C for 20 minutes
* 500 g wheat malt
* 4.5 kg liquid light malt extract (Coopers)
* 45 g Pilgrim hops @ 60 minutes
* 20 g Fuggles hopes @ 30 minutes
* 25 g Fuggles hopes @ 10 minutes
* US-05 yeast, dry sprinkled and stirred, pitched @ 17C, ambient 19C.
** OG = 1060

ESB? Hmmm - not quite. It doesn't completely match the statistical profile listed in some of the judging associations' guidebooks, but then again, quite a few favourite beers, ales, stouts and more don't match a given profile yet are well enjoyed world over. Just like cooking, some people prefer more or less something or another - it's just personal taste.

In this case, it wasn't taste. My stock of Pilgrim is about four or five months old so it's possible that it is no longer as strong. Thus, this brew is experimental.

There wasn't anything new or exciting to photograph during production, so I will make good with some pics as soon as it's in the glass.

Cheers!!

And the research continues...

Yes, still making decisions about what to make.

Brew day, I have decided is tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, I thought this article would amuse you for a little while.

http://www.sloshspot.com/blog/12-22-2008/How-to-Know-If-You-Are-a-Beer-Snob-92


Catch you on the flipside.


Cheers!!

Back to brewing...

Soon. Maybe this weekend.

It has been far too busy with work and some onsite upgrades for some of my major hardware clients. I haven't even had a chance to bake some bread for a week or so.

I'm missing brewing and drinking the fruits of my labour. It's time to get started again with something perhaps towards the Pilsener or maybe even Lager end of the spectrum. It's bitterly cold here in Sydney - only 12C at 11:40 am. The newspaper this morning said it was only 3C around the city this morning before the dawn.

As part of deciding what to make, research is in order. I'm looking at the various beers of the world which are flavoursome, quick to get finished so that the brewery re-start is quick.

Have a look at the following link - it's inspirational source material for the most part, and deterrent if nothing else in other parts. I mean - after all - they show VB as representative of Australian beer. WTF? Megaswill is not FTW.

http://www.sloshspot.com/blog/11-19-2008/Around-the-World-in-116-Beers-80


Time to go play with Beersmith this evening...


Cheers!!

Beer - a better rehydrator than water.

It has been far too busy for me lately, so sorry for the pack of posts. I'll be back soon with more beery and bready yeasty goodness.

In the meanwhile, check this out:

http://beerrunner.draftmag.com/2009/06/02/beer-now-scientifically-better-than-water/


Until soon! Cheers!!

And just in case you think it's all too serious...

...then cut and paste this link into your broswer and prepare for a giggle.

http://komplexify.com/epsilon/2009/05/12/the-science-of-the-suckpoint/

I'll be brewing something tasty again shortly...

Cheers!!

The Evils of Glass.

Just a short post this time. For once.

In normal roasting and baking, glass dishes are a Godsend. Nothing much sticks to them and even the most gooey, sticky, fast-and-hot baked dishes are easy to scrub clean. Pyrex is aweosome.

When it comes to baking bread and the like, forget glass.

I tried a new focaccia recipe last night that I want to fine tune before I give it to you. It was very late and I felt so lazy that I didn't reach for my big black baking pan and just used the big glass one which was nearest to hand. Big mistake. Despite oiling it well the focaccia stuck a little all over the place and was a pain to remove without some cracking and little bits being torn off during removal. Less than perfect effort I'm sad to say.

So, give the glass dishes a miss and stick to proper baking pans.

Your mouth will thank you.

Bakers Yeast.

When it comes to making bread, rolls and the like your choice of yeast could either make or break the result.

For many years, I've been using Tandaco packaged yeast. It's very convenient in little sealed individual foil packets and it's cheaper than a lot of other baker's yeasts on the market.

Or so I thought.

Recently in the supermarket, I looked at what other yeasts were available and only found one other than my trusty Tandaco. Lowans. I thought that I should chance it, after all it was a package of about 280 grams for about the same price as a dozen sachets of Tandaco - much more yeasty goodness for the money.

I started looking for another yeast as I'm looking for the ultimate soft fluffy white burger bun - similar to a Macdonalds bun but with more texture and slightly firmer - somewhat like a well made Vietnamese baker's bread roll... or at least the illegitimate offspring of the two. I don't like to use more preservatives than a little salt, sugar and olive oil - a vague attempt at healthy eating.

Fingers crossed!

I had a BIG surprise when I used Lowans yeast for the first time a couple of days ago.

Scientific method, simply put, is creating a repeatable set of circumstances - a benchmark if you will - where you alter one variable at a time so that you can see the effect. I used my standard white loaf recipe, but I wanted bread rolls. Prep was the same except that I cut the dough into six pieces for burger buns. The variable was the yeast. Lowans. Two level teaspoons.

What a surprise!

At the first rising, the result was a bit disappointing. The dough ball had risen only to two thirds the size of the Tandaco based recipes.

Undaunted, I punched it down, cut it into six and let the second rise take place.

Wow. All I can say is wow. At 45 minutes into the second rise, the 'buns' were more like giant panini and spreading fast across the baking sheet. I grabbed the lot, gave it a minor punchdown and cut and remade the buns so hopefully they would be taller and stiffer. I did an inverse Kaiserbroetchen fold (pics some other time).

Another 45 minutes rising later I had half a dozen panini maximus trying to escape the baking sheet.

Quick drizzle of olive oil, a spray of water, a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a final water spray then into the oven at 185C fan forced for 25 minutes. The result? Slightly crusty, yummy buns for far less than you can buy them from the baker, let alone the supermarket.

Take the time to look into what yeasts are available to you and don't be afraid to experiment.

Happy baking!

Cinnamon Rolls - without yeast!

Hello!

Sorry I haven't been around for a while but I've been busy with some other projects and haven't had a lot of time in the kitchen.

However, this morning the urge takes and I want to make something tasty to have with coffee this afternoon. Cinnamon rolls!

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I want to show you a supreme recipe that looks to really be the business:
http://www.bigredkitchen.com/2009/04/quick-cinnamon-rolls.html All kudos and praise to the author for this one.

When you look at that recipe, it calls for optional 'cinnamon chips' and 'caramel cookie bits' which I don't think are available here in Australia. They look like a nice addition and could possibly be cloned by making a small batch of soft cookie dough, splitting it and flavouring it appropriately and making small pieces of it (kinda like spaetzle) and adding it into the roll-up.

The bad news? No yeast... but it looks yummy anyway.

Oh - and Happy Frickin' Mothers' Day.

Fluffy Buns.

OK - I showed you how to make some sturdy buns for a good BBQ and a juicy flame grilled burger - a good firm bun that will stand up to the punishment of a beer fuelled BBQ and lots of food stuffed into a decent bun.

Your next mission, should you decide to accept it, is to make a completely fluffy bun along the lines of a commercial bun.

The bad news? Can't be done. Unless you want to start adding chemistry to it. If that's your goal, I'm sorry to say I can't help you. However, I can get you along the way and still remain true to the goals of good food with few additions.

How?

Easy! Here's how:

• Use the basic bread recipe from a much earlier post.
• Double the yeast. Two packs of Tandaco or two spoons of your favourite bulk yeast.
• Reduce the water content a little.
• Allow more processing time in your machine. Allow the dough to knead until just before it becomes sticky and gooey. For a regular loaf, usually around two minutes is enough. If you allow perhaps five minutes you will observe the dough becoming stickier. That's about the time to stop, else it will become really gooey and barely movable by your machine's blades.
• Cut the dough into six or eight pieces, sprinkle with olive oil and sesame seeds, spray with water and bake at 180C fan forced for 25 minutes.

If the sweet smell of sesame and oil cooking hot doesn't make you hungry, nothing will.

The light fluffiness of Viet-na-bread and Maccas (Mickey D's, McDonalds, Golden Arches, etc) buns can't be done in a home kitchen as far as I can tell and have experienced.

Apologies for the lack of pics lately, but it's very busy here. I promise I will give you before during and after pics more often.

Take care and happy baking and brewing.

Cheers!!

Hamburger Buns.

You're going to love this one - real home made fluffy hamburger buns.


We're not talking the little hamburgers from White Castle. These mothers will beat even the worst munchies that Jay and Kumar could ever come up with.


You know how the buns from the shop become stodgy and collapse when you make a proper country style, man-sized hamburger barbecued with fresh premium mince, onions, pineapple, beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, lots of sauce and all the good stuff? These ones certainly don't. They hold together under the stress of the biggest Aussie hamburger, let alone the 'I can haz cheezburger' lolcat crap from the multinational chains.


So enough telling you how goooood these are. Let's make 'em!


Here's the ingredients:

• 200 ml luke warm milk
• 30 grams unsalted butter (you can use margarine or olive-oil based spread if you like)
• 1 egg (small is OK, large is better, jumbo free range is best)
• 450 grams plain flour
• 30 grams castor sugar (more or less, depending on your taste)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 Packs of Tandaco dry yeast
• An egg yolk
• Sesame seeds

I use my trusty Braun Combimax because I'm a lazy guy and the instructions are based on using machinery. If you're one of the keen folk who like to do it by hand, then adapt the instructions to your method.


Here's what to do with the ingredients:

• Put the flour and butter into the Combimax and run it on the lowest speed for around one minute or until they're well combined.
• After that, add the salt, sugar and yeast allowing them to combine well for around one minute.
• Break the egg into the Combimax's chamber while it's still running. You may need to increase the speed to three so that the dry mix forms into crumbly little pieces. After that, increase the speed to six.
• Slowly add the milk as with other recipes in this blog until a good dough ball forms, then add just a touch more. You probably won't need to use all the milk. However, it depends on the flour you're using. Adjust the amount as you see fit.
• Roll the dough into a ball with olive oil lightly spread all over it in a bowl.
• Cover and allow to rise for around one hour to one and a half hours. It should more than double in size.
• Punch the dough down.
• Gently knead the dough, adding any whole grains or other additions you would like in the bread.
• Form the dough into a long cylinder and cut into eight equal sized pieces.
• Flatten the pieces to about half of the height of what would would like the finished buns to be.
• Allow to rise again, covered in a warm place, for about 30 - 45 minutes. Longer rising makes for fluffier buns.
• Preheat the over to 180C fan forced.
• Lightly beat the extra egg yolk with a teaspoon of water and brush onto the risen buns. This will make them brown to look like the buns you see in burger joint advertising but rarely, if ever, get when you buy.
• Decorate with sesame seeds for that authentic burger look.
• Bake for around 12 minutes.
• Switch your oven to either fan forced grill mode or switch to grill mode until the top baking tray of buns is browned to your liking. Move the bottom tray up to where the top tray was and repeat the browning procedure. Careful you don't put the buns too close to a non-fan forced grill else you will burn them instead of browning.
• Place the buns on a cooling rack.
• Ready to eat after about fifteen to twenty minutes.

As with all of my recipes, there are only limited preservatives used - small amounts of salt and sugar. These buns are best on the day they are baked and will become stale quite quickly. After day two, they make great toast, pain perdue, French toast or whatever it is you like to do with less-then-fresh bread. After day five they make great king-sized hockey pucks for you Canuck readers!


Happy Baking!!


PS - On Saturday 11 April 2009 I'm going to show you how to make Hot Cross Buns for Easter Sunday morning (12 April 2009). Guys - this is a way to win huge brownie points with your SWMBO especially with the prices they're charging for Hot Cross Buns this year! You're going to need some brown sugar, icing sugar and mixed peel as well as your usual baking ingredients. Oh - and butter - real butter because nothing else tastes better than oven fresh Hot Cross Buns with butter. Fresh from the oven they taste and smell awesome!

Spent grain bread.

One of the great things about hand made beer is that there are some by-products.

The top one for anyone who uses specialty grain or is an all grain brewer is of course spent grain.

Specialty grains draining in a strainer.

For extract brewers, specialty grain is used in small amount to add additional colour, fermentables, flavour and mouthfeel. Usually, it's steeped in water at about 80C to extract all of the characteristics which you've chosen it for.

Afterwards, a lot of brewers throw it out, others use it for mulch in the garden.

But I'm weird. I bake bread with it.

Close up of spent grain.

Have a look back here for the basic bread recipe: http://yeastygoodness.blogspot.com/2009/03/simple-linseed-and-oat-loaf.html. Use that recipe, but leave out the linseed grain and the rolled oats.

How much spent grain is needed? About 100 grams or a big breakfast bowl worth will be enough for one loaf. Find some inventive way to use the remaining grain.

It's necessary to add more olive oil to this recipe to help keep the bread moist a little longer. Very grainy loaves tend to become stale a bit faster than plain old white bread.

After adding the first cup of water, it's spent grain time. Add about three or four heaped tablespoons into your machine. Let it mix through the half-wet flour very well and add water a little at a time until the dough balls stands up and begins to be kneaded.

There is residual water in the grain, so expect the dough to become too wet. To fix that, add flour one tablespoon at a time and wait a moment until it is taken up. You will get a feel for this as you go.

Proofing and second rising are just the same as with any other loaf.

Dough after proofing.

You can decorate the loaf in just the same way as the original recipe mentioned above. At that time you can add more grain if you like.

Decorated loaf before baking.

Done!

One of the great things about this recipe is that the grain makes the bread a lovely brown colour from the remaining colour in the grain. Not only are you giving yourself a truly flavoursome bread but you're doing good things for your insides as well.

Lovely colour, tastes great.

Happy Baking!!