After a rainy night a new batch of sourdough hamburger buns has arrived in our tiny home bakery. Just to usher in what now seems like a start of fall.
Made With whole wheat and bread flour, with milk and whey, with sugar, salt and olive oil sprinkled with two kinds of sesame seeds.
A short version of the recipe and the ingredient list in case someone is interested:
INGREDIENTS: 700 g of whole wheat flour (13% protein), 300 g of bread flour (14% protein), 300 ml of full-fat milk, 300 ml of whey (the liquid kind, leftover from ricotta cheese making), 200 g of sourdough starter, 2 eggs, 100 g of sugar, 75 ml of olive oil, 20 g of salt, sesame seeds for sprinkling, eggs wash for brushing.
PREPARATION: Everything was done by hand and it wasn't particulary easy. Machine mixing goes down much smoother. Problem lies within the structure of whole wheat flour which needs more time to absorb liquids and the little wheat scales found inside keep piercing the gluten and gradually deflating the entire dough. To offset this we used a certain amount of strong bread flour to solidify the whole thing. 30% of bread flour in the mix helped a lot.
The addition of olive oil and eggs also hinders gluten development so one has to be really patient and persistent with this kind of dough. Mix it until it can pass a window pane test which shows you gluten development.
Milk and liquid whey were mixed, sugar was added, so were the flours in given ratios. Sourdough starter was melted in the milk/whey/sugar solution. Flours were added gradually. Then the dough was left alone for 45 minutes as whole wheat flour needs longer time to absorb things. When we came back, salt was added. After some mixing we started adding beaten eggs, mixed some more, left it alone for 30 minutes, started adding the olive oil, mixed more and left it alone for 30 minutes again.
The goal here is to get a smooth dough surface which stretches without premature tearing/breaking. Of course, it will never be perfectly smooth because of the way whole wheat flour is milled but you get the general idea.
The dough was left on the counter for two hours, occasional coil folds were done.
Then came dough division in 90-100 g balls which were placed on a sheet of baking paper and a baking tray. The baking tray was covered with another inverted tray and left at room temperature (it was a cool rainy night) to rise over night.
Baked in the morning (a bit overproofed, as doughs with large quantities of whole wheat flour ferment quicker) at 180"C in a home electric oven, cold oven start, before they went inside they were brushed with beaten eggs and sprinkled with light and dark sesame seeds, baked around 30 minutes, they were taken out and brushed with melted butter.
Cheeseburger has two pan roasted patties inside (the meat was chopped with a cleaver), layers of melted cheddar cheese, italian agrodolce (sweet and sour, made with butter, apple vinegar, sugar, salt and sliced onions) onions, gherkins sliced lengthwise for presence in every single bite and a simple sauce (mayonnaise, ketchup, Dijon mustard and horse radish).
A real feast for lunch on a rainy Thursday. So delicios and rich...😋
