This is another KAF-inspired recipe, since it came with a burger roll pan I bought from them. Please don’t ask me why I bought it. It’s better for everyone concerned. Especially since you don’t need the pan to make the rolls. I’m pretty sure you could just bake them spread out on a sheet pan or something.
I was all set to start the recipe when I noticed that I was out of the very first ingredient — milk. I had buttermilk, but I wasn’t sure if I could substitute it. The Google search I did said it was okay in most circumstances, but since it is more acidic than milk, it could mess with the leavening. They gave instructions for baking powder and baking soda, but I didn’t see anything about yeast. So I opted for the safe route and used my dry milk powder reconstituted back to one cup.
Is there anything more gross than reconstituted dry milk powder? For some reason I don’t mind it staying powdered, but when you reconstitute it it has that awful institutional smell, like a hospital or a something. Maybe it’s just me.
Anyway, I added half a stick of butter and warmed it on the stove.
In the meantime, combined some all-purpose flour (2 cups or 8.5 oz)…
…with some white whole wheat flour (1 cup/4.25 oz). The original recipe was all a-p flour, but apparently you can substitute out white whole wheat for up to half of the flour in most recipes to give it a little more nutritional goodness.
Continued to add 1.5 tsp salt, 2 tbsp. sugar, 2 tsp instant yeast, and 1 tsp onion powder (substituted for minced onions, of which I had none), until I had this:
Now with the help of my trusty KAF dough whisk, I was ready to stir.
Mmm, butter lumps.
After mixing, I had this:
Still butter lumps! The Kitchen Aid will take care of those.
The Kitchen Aid does my kneading for me for about 10 minutes. It is at this point that I remember the last time I used my mixer, when I had to get Mike to remove the bowl for me. Luckily that doesn’t happen this time, since he’s in North Carolina.
After kneading, but oddly shaped. The dough hook will do that to you.
At this point we are ready to rise:
And an hour later:
The most annoying part about making rolls — and it’s not even that annoying — is trying to get them evenly divided.
I use my scale to measure out the dough into six roughly equal pieces:
As I mentioned before, I suck at shaping bread, but I actually find rolls pretty easy to shape.
Covered with greased plastic wrap for the second rise:
I flattened the tops after 10 minutes:
And then let them rise for another hour.
Halfway through I started preheating the oven to 375. Mine were done after 16 minutes — the recipe said 15-20, but my oven runs hot — and they looked like this:
They were super tall. I wonder if that is the benefit of using a special bun pan?
I have big plans for these rolls, none of which involve hamburger of course (vegetarian). But I had to freeze most of them since Mike won’t be back until Sunday and there’s no way I’ll eat them all before then. I think.
