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Lurch

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I tried hamburger buns yesterday, but same as my bread loaves they didn’t rise much or make air pockets, so the end result was more dense than it should be. They ate like biscuits, so it was an ok accident but I need to figure out what’s going on. Yeast is new and activated in warm water, salt added last. Maybe these online recipes need to be adjusted for altitude?  I don’t have bread flour, only all purpose. Kneading deficiency?  


This is what I’ve been using (see photo above)

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/233652/homemade-hamburger-buns/

I allow my bread to rise in the oven that I preheat just until it hits 100* then turn off.

Also, let your egg sit in warm 100*+ water for a while before cracking it. You don’t want the cold egg to slow the yeast
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7 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I tried hamburger buns yesterday, but same as my bread loaves they didn’t rise much or make air pockets, so the end result was more dense than it should be. They ate like biscuits, so it was an ok accident but I need to figure out what’s going on. Yeast is new and activated in warm water, salt added last. Maybe these online recipes need to be adjusted for altitude?  I don’t have bread flour, only all purpose. Kneading deficiency?  

Can you post the recipe? If you're over 10k feet you may need to adjust for altitude, but there's likely something else going on. Is your flour fresh? Are you using active dry or instant yeast? Instant yeast doesn't need to be soaked in water first, so that'll eliminate any potential issues with water temperature. Are you kneading by hand or with a stand mixer, and for how long? You shouldn't need bread flour unless you're making sourdough, as long as your AP flour is fresh, but whichever flour you use, you'll need to be sure you're kneading it enough to develop the gluten. After you first knead it, before letting it rise, is the dough smooth or does it look like batter? If you tried to pick up a piece of it, would it come away easily from the rest of the dough, or try to stay in one ball with the rest of the dough? One thing to use when determining if you've kneaded long enough is the windowpane test - you should be able to pick up a small piece of dough and gently stretch it enough so that you can see light through the other side, without the dough tearing. If it tears, it needs more kneading.

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I’m only at 5000 feet, but usually with cookie and cake mixes it has alternate directions for anything above 3500. 
 

I use active dry (I have both and use whatever the recipe calls for). Flour is fresh, or at least its new to me and just opened. Didn’t check the packaging for a mill date if such a thing exists. 
 

im making sure to add enough flour so that the dough is not runny and batter like, but I could be underflouring it or underkneading it. It certainly tears quickly enough that it wouldn’t pass the windowpane test. 
 

I don’t have a stand mixer so sometimes I do it only by hand and sometimes I do some by hand but let the bread machine mix some as well. The buns I did all by hand. 
 

here’s the recipe

https://www.food.com/recipe/40-minute-hamburger-buns-183081

with my breads, I try to use bread machine recipes but since I haven’t liked the texture coming from those I bought some bread pans and will start oven baking in them.  I think the change in orientation from vertical to horizontal will help with the rise.

 

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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’m only at 5000 feet, but usually with cookie and cake mixes it has alternate directions for anything above 3500. 
 

I use active dry (I have both and use whatever the recipe calls for). Flour is fresh, or at least its new to me and just opened. Didn’t check the packaging for a mill date if such a thing exists. 
 

im making sure to add enough flour so that the dough is not runny and batter like, but I could be underflouring it or underkneading it. It certainly tears quickly enough that it wouldn’t pass the windowpane test. 
 

I don’t have a stand mixer so sometimes I do it only by hand and sometimes I do some by hand but let the bread machine mix some as well. The buns I did all by hand. 
 

here’s the recipe

https://www.food.com/recipe/40-minute-hamburger-buns-183081

with my breads, I try to use bread machine recipes but since I haven’t liked the texture coming from those I bought some bread pans and will start oven baking in them.  I think the change in orientation from vertical to horizontal will help with the rise.

 

I think the issue is that recipe - it's weird for a yeasted dough to require no rise time. Looks like others are having trouble in the comments, too. Try this one and see how it turns out. It sounds like you might be underkneading, too. In a stand mixer, you know you're good when the dough starts to pull away from the sides and comes together in a ball. At this point, most sandwich bread feels soft and maybe a bit tacky, but not sticky. And passes the windowpane test.

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Starting to get upset at my lack of result. No matter how much I kneaded, the dough kept breaking and getting sticky. Gonna try again tomorrow and go as long as it takes and feed it as much flour as it wants, recipe be damned. 

All the online videos look the same, not much help.

i will figure out what good dough feels like if it takes me 20 loaves.  At least they’re good for giving the dog his allergy medicine.

plus I have yogurt now so I need to try the naan bread on the griddle. Hopefully that goes smoother. 

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My oldest is on a baking kick. Looks like cinnamon rolls and focaccia are on the menu tomorrow. She’s made some excellent rolls, bagels need some work. We’ve had trouble finding  bread flour which has limited what she can do.

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13 hours ago, workswithseed said:

Just discard.

Ok that's why your loaf was dense. The discard won't work on its own because it needs to be refreshed and "woken up" before it can leaven bread. Usually, you'll pull it out of the fridge, refresh it, and let it sit till it at least doubles, and that's when it's active enough to give you a good rise. The discard on its own still adds good flavor but it needs help from commercial yeast to leaven bread if you're adding it straight out of the fridge.

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2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Finally a measure of success, with @austingirl’s bun recipe. 
Also pictured are homemade fries and locally raised and processed jalapeño cheddar brats.  It was a fun afternoon.

 

CA943274-6878-4DD1-975D-9D3C526275AF.jpeg

17EBE13A-0378-4216-93DA-87ACECDEE4CE.jpeg

Looks awesome! I'm glad it turned out well! My son asked if we could have homemade burgers this weekend so I think I'm going to whip up these buns while I'm at it.

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This is what I’ve been using (see photo above)

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/233652/homemade-hamburger-buns/



New batch of hamburger buns last night with this. I replaced 1 tablespoon of sugar with 1 tablespoon of honey and it worked great. Gave me the bit more sweetness I was looking for. Dropped the oven temp 20* as honey browns a bit faster and they came out great with the same cook time as before.
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Bread adjacent, but I saw this easy pizza dough recipe from bobby flay and did it this afternoon.  No pics but quick and easy, and I added some garlic powder and dried basil to it to try and add some flavor. 
as it says, using AP flour instead of bread flour makes for a softer result, but that was ok. 
 

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/pizza-dough-recipe-1921714

DD941CF8-1DDD-48FC-B08E-317318B6BE24.jpeg

Edited by Pato del Muerto
Finished pizza pic
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On 4/24/2020 at 11:26 AM, luke duke said:

What kind of starter can I make with this?

Saf Instant Yeast, 1 Pound Pouch
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0001CXUHW/

You don't want to make starter with that - if you have instant yeast just use it to make bread like usual. The purpose of making your own starter is to corral enough wild yeast so you don't have to use commercial yeast if you don't want to. I'm a big fan of the pineapple juice technique to make starter - it gets you around one of the most common issues you can encounter and you can get to making tasty bread faster. If you want the science behind it, there's an essay linked in the article above.

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My lessons learned are two fold right now. 
 

1) when a recipe says to proof for an amount of time or until it doubles in size, you ignore the time. It’s just an estimate. I had started out treating it as a whichever came first deal, so if it hadn’t risen enough but the time was up I’d move on. 
 

2) what other people describe as “tacky” feeling dough is stickier than what I consider tacky. So I was feeding my dough too much flour. Made it tear instead of stretch, not rise well, and have a floury taste. 
 

once I figured those things out, bakes started coming out much better. 

FC2657C2-230E-431E-8166-FA9B59CEBC64.jpeg

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I have found that the rise works best when I heat the oven to 100* and then turn it off, then let the dough rise inside. I’ve never needed more rising time since I started doing this

With tacky dough, I just grease my hands w a little olive oil. Allows me to handle it without adding more flour

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Yeah. I’ve also found that I turn the oven on and forget I did it until it beeps that preheating is done. Then I get to let it sit open for 20 minutes to cool down. 


Yeah don’t know why my oven won’t let me set to 100*. I’ve done the same
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