Butter Buns.

So, I’ve been baking away all winter, and eating it all, and my pants don’t fit, and Thank God for leggings…and I am Everywoman/man in this, right? Times like these call for…more butter. Butter Buns accurately describes these rolls, the state of all our asses, what we need to do to get said asses into our pants, the name of my next band, and possibly a new term of endearment for pandemic couples everywhere.

I was looking for dinner roll recipes, and stumbled across a post on King Arthur Flour’s site that offered up ways to use discard sourdough starter in several different rolls. The Golden Pull-Apart Butter Buns looked like what I was thinking, so I scribbled the substitutions on the original roll recipe and made a batch.

As I was weighing ingredients, I noted that the weight vs volume measurement of two of them - potato flakes and powdered milk - seemed to be off. More accurate baking calls for measuring by weight, but many recipes also include volume for those who don’t have food scales. As I weighed out the potato flakes, I thought “Well, 23 grams looks like WAY more than the 2 tablespoons it calls for…”

But my usual stance on cooking is to make something according to the recipe first, and then adjust as necessary. And bread can be tricky. So I followed the recipe.

The dough seemed OK, but the estimated 60-90 minutes of rise time, to double in size…was not happening. I let them go to 2 hours before giving up and shaping them into balls and placing in the cake pans for the second rise. Also predicted to take 60-90 minutes. And also did not double in size.

I baked them anyway. They did rise a bit more, but not much. They looked more like biscuits than dinner rolls, and not at ALL like the picture.

The recipe makes 16 rolls and they smelled amazing. They tasted even better. No one cared what they looked like…well, I cared, but they were.so.damn.good. We ate a bunch of them, and I tossed the rest in a bag in the freezer, but we kept pulling them out and eating them…so I made another batch.

I followed the recipe again and debated about the potato flake and dry milk measurements, but again used the weight called for in the recipe. This time I did not use a cake pan, but placed them all in a 9x13 baking dish.

Nothing changed. Dough did not rise properly. Rolls came out looking the same.

We ate them all in less than a week.

“But I wouldn’t serve these to company,” I complained to my husband. “What company?” he replied, before continuing “They’ll be too busy eating them to care what they look like.” He could be right but…

Third batch. This time I changed two things. I used the volume measurements for the potato flour and the dry milk. And just for fun, I changed the shape to a cloverleaf to bake in a muffin tin.

Oh.

OH.

The look is dinner roll. The texture is dinner roll. The taste is dinner roll.

But guess what? These are not quite as tasty as the previous two batches…husband might be on to something, but we’ll need another batch I think, don’t you?

Speaking of Weird Baking Fails...

What the hell is that, you are asking? That, my friend, is the bottom of an otherwise beautiful loaf of sourdough.

Because, in a moment of weakness, I used cheap parchment paper. Specifically this one:

I have never, ever, EVER had anything stick to parchment. But I learned today, to my eternal regret, that apparently, parchment paper is not just…parchment paper.

There are subtle differences. Like sometimes your baked goods actually STICK TO IT.

I googled “removing parchment stuck to…” (which helpfully autofilled to “cookies”), and the tip was to wet the parchment paper and peel it off. They neglected to add “in very small strips, allow 3 hours to get it all off, good luck.”

I googled “can you eat parchment paper” and the answers were generally mixed.

Best answer to the problem? “Use a bread knife, saw off bottom of bread.”

<sigh>

NOTE: What I have used, with NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER - Kroger-brand parchment pop-ups (love them, so easy), Reynolds parchment, and even meijer-brand parchment.

Bread Fails. And Successes.

Photos from left to right: First loaves that were, er, not optimal; first sourdough loaf using the Dutch oven; abject and absolute failure of a loaf after several successful ones, for reasons (see below).

The problem with pandemic baking is you inevitably end up wasting that flour that is so difficult to find. Because sometimes you do something stupid. Or you don’t have the right tools. Or things just don’t work for no apparent reason and you end up with yet another entry in the Life’s Little Mysteries column.

As someone who doesn’t always appreciate a ton of narrative before you get to the damn recipe, I’m going to post the successful recipes (for me anyway) for starter and sourdough bread right here, both from King Arthur flour (I do have a few tips, that you can read about below).

Starter: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-recipe

Sourdough bread: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/no-knead-sourdough-bread-recipe

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(caveat: I am truly a rookie at the bread thing. What works for me, may not work for you. So don’t hesitate to head to the Internets and do some research. I really like the King Arthur Flour site, as well as The Kitchn.)

Warning: Really. Long. Post. Starts. Here.

Notes on the Starter

Smells vinegary and sour, looks gross - perfect!

I actually did not follow this recipe. I had already started a starter (is that right?) using a recipe from the Reinhart book, and was finding the whole thing unnecessarily complicated and fussy. And then I watched the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and he was discussing bread baking with Jake Gyllenhaal and Gyllenhaal, who was looking unwashed and grungy yet still somehow adorable, was whispering that rye flour was key…so I started tossing in rye flour when I fed my starter. And then I fed it the artisan bread flour I got from White Lotus Farms via Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter, and then some all-purpose flour once or twice, and then I threw in some whole wheat flour. So, what I am saying here is that my starter is a real mongrel, and I am also possibly saying that anything goes. Your wild yeasties may not care what flavor of flour you give them to munch on and gas the place up.

What I found enlightening about this starter was the feeding schedule, which is basically equal parts flour and water and starter. So basic. So easy to adjust depending on how much starter you need. A real game-changer, honestly.

Also, the refrigerator is your friend here. I mean, we all have gobs of time on our hands, but feeding a starter every day, or every 12 hours…is not really how I want to spend it. Like, I just don’t think I should have to maintain a calendar for what is essentially a non-sentient being. At least, I hope it’s non-sentient. Anyway, feed your starter, let it grow for a few hours on the counter, and shove it in the fridge. Then feed it weekly - or don’t, it’s hard to kill, really.

Wow, I really do hope it’s non-sentient.

When you want to use it, set it on the counter. As it warms up, it should start to bubble and come back to life. If it seems sluggish, feed it and let it grow again at room temp, and you should be all set.

Notes on the Sourdough

The single biggest falutin’ deal here is the Dutch oven. As in, the difference in how your bread rises, crusts, looks and tastes using this method is so beyond extra, it’s practically The Rapture.

I literally squealed (“Nailed it!”) and danced around the kitchen when I took the cover off the baker the first time I made bread in it (see photo at beginning of this post).

Now, do you need the $350 Le Creuset Dutch oven? Well, no. Unless you want one. Honestly, any 5 qt oven-safe pot (to at least 450 degrees) with an oven-safe lid (although, foil could work just as well) will do the job. Fun fact about the Le Creuset lids - the standard black plastic knob is not high-heat-resistant! But hey, you can spend $20 more and get the metal one! Ergh.

Forget all the business about oiling the inside, and flouring and whatnot. Two words: parchment paper. Trust me on this. Your entire baking life will be so much better.

Now, YMMV, but I had to make some adjustments. As gorgeous as that first loaf was, the bottom was burnt. After some googling, I slid my baking stone onto the bottom rack after preheating the oven and that seemed to solve the problem. I also reduced the temp slightly - preheated at 450°, and reduced the baking temp from 450° to 435° - so I could get the longer bake (without a burnt crust) that I seemed to need to get the internal temperature to the 210° indicated in the recipe.

All of that took about 3 loaves. All attractive and edible, but not quite…there.

Bread Fail

Loaf four was a disaster. Big Bread Fail. The main culprit? Strawberry jam.

Failed bread looks like a failed soufflé too. Who knew?

I picked strawberries that morning. Placed the bread dough from fridge to Dutch oven before I left - and should have known there was a problem right away. No-knead bread dough is a little wet and sticky; this was even wetter, and I figured this was due to using regular bread flour instead of the heavier, higher-wheat content “artisan” flour I had been using. And it’s possible this was a factor. But off I went to pick berries.

Time-wise, the dough needed another hour before going into the oven when I got back. So, I preheated the oven, set my canning pot on the stove to heat up, and made jam.

You betcha there was a lot of heat in that kitchen.

I lifted the lid off the bread to score the top and this…enormous, white, bubbly, blobby thing was sitting there. (No, not THAT thing - this is the bread section, not the political section).

NOW I know that I could have dumped it all out, punched it down, reshaped it and plopped it back in the pot to rise a little and then baked it. BUT I DID NOT KNOW THAT THEN.

So I made a sad attempt to score the top and popped it in the oven.

The jam turned out fine.

Bread, not so much. In addition to the sad lumpy mess I had to pry out of the pot, it had no flavor at all.

The chickens were fine with it, however.

Loaf 5…

…made it’s brief appearance on WHMI and I forgot to taste it. But The Great Foodini was having a breadgasm while eating a slice slathered in my garlic-chive butter, so maybe it was adequate?

I need to make Loaf 6 to confirm, but the magic mix seems to be approximately half King Arthur unbleached bread flour and half White Lotus Farms unbleached bread flour. It’s a journey!

I’ll let you know!

Why Is Everyone Baking Bread - and why sourdough?

As a baker - but not usually of bread - I was pretty damn annoyed with all of you from about late-March to…well, now. The annoyance came with some amused moments, as I watched all the self-rising flour fly off the shelves and I thought “Someone’s going to be a little surprised if they’re using that for their cookie recipes.” (Self-rising flour already has baking powder and salt in it - generally does not work real well in recipes that do not call for it specifically).

But then the yeast disappeared, and the Jiffy Mix, and the specialty flours, and finally, egads, the gluten-free stuff. What in the world was going on?

Well, we were all home. For HOURS AND DAYS at a time. And with the bread aisle looking a pack of breadivore dinosaurs rumbled through it, many folks turned to the internet thinking “Well, I’ll just bake some. How hard can it be?”

The reality is…it’s actually not hard. It takes a lot of time, and time is what we all had (and still have) in abundance. But bread can be fussy, and it takes some practice. And the instructions can be, well, vague and maybe a little much. Seriously, I read 4 different recipes for making a sourdough starter before I found one that didn’t have me muttering “But what does that MEAN?” And I bake, on a regular basis. While the nerd in me appreciates, say, the nine pages it takes for Peter Reinhart to guide you through the steps to create a sourdough starter in Artisan Breads Every Day , it’s all over when you toss in stuff like testing with pH paper. And three pages for a sourdough bread recipe is really two pages too many, IMO.

Well, why sourdough anyway? What is the deal with everyone making sourdough? Aside from, “it’s tasty!” - see the above problem with finding yeast. Starter - that magical fermented combination of flour and water that leavens, or raises, the bread - eliminates the need for yeast. Problem solved. Maybe.

We had time. Some of us actually had flour. We had internet. And Amazon for the baking stone and the Dutch oven you never knew you needed. Conditions were perfect for that Zen-like process of producing the most basic of sustenance.

Or not. Read on!