Bread Tutorial Variations

Posted on Mar 14 2009 - 11:05am by Patty

Create a Simple and Affordable Thanksgiving FeastYesterday I shared my bread baking tutorial with you, and promised you some variations on the recipe at the end. When I used to bake this bread 8 years ago, I made just about everything from this recipe. Rolls, buns, sandwich rolls, even cinnamon bread and rolls. This recipe is incredibly versatile and can be used for pretty much all of your basic bread needs. I did have a separate recipe for bagels and English muffins, but that was about it.

What makes this recipe so nice is that there is not a lot of ingredients in it, making it one of the more frugal recipes you can use.

I do not have any pictures to share with you, I never took any when baking these variations and now with Celiac disease in our home, I just do not bake these recipes anymore. Time to start adapting them to wheat free!!

VARIATIONS


Rolls
are made this way. After the first rise,you can divide your dough into 12 pieces, cover and let rest for a couple of minutes form into balls and place in large 13X9 in. pan,let rise till light and fluffy. I like to wait till the tops are well above the top of the pan. Here is where you can get a bit creative, try a bit of melted butter, perhaps add some fresh chopped rosemary and parmesan to it (with the butter) this is one of my favorites. Sometimes I just do butter and parmesan as well. or you can use an egg white wash, and sesame seeds.

Hamburger buns are made by dividing the dough into 15- 18 pieces(after the first rising)and again let it rest for a couple minutes, then pull it down on it self making as smooth of a ball as possible, gentle stretch it into a thin circle, place it on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray and sprinkled with corn meal. Place them fairly close together, but give them enough room to rise, you want them to be touching when they go into the oven.Allow to rise till doubled and nice and puffy. Brush them with an egg wash consisting of one egg white and two tablespoons of water, then sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake at 325 until golden brown.

Hot dog buns– divide dough into 18 to 20 pieces(depending on how big you want your buns to be.) Allow to rest for a few minutes(this is very important to roll these the way that they need to be rolled the dough needs a chance to relax.) roll them on the counter or in between your hands to make a rope 6-8 inches long. Place them on a greased cookie sheet close together, you want these guys to expend a lot of their energy upward, give them enough room to become a nice diameter, but no more, otherwise they will spread more horizontal and will look more like a breadstick than a hot dog bun. You can do an egg wash on these to make them look shiny if you want, they too go into an oven at 325.

Sandwich buns are similar to the hot dog buns except for the following; seperate the dough(after the first rise) into 8 pieces, or how ever many you want depending on the size you would like. You can shape this similar to how you would shape a hot dog bun or a loaf of bread. allow them to rise to double, brush them with an egg wash then take a very sharp knife and put three slices in the top of them. Again bake at 325. I use the Amish bread recipe or a french roll recipe for this one ( I will post this one later too)

Wheat bread that is partial wheat and partial white, can be made simply by substituting wheat flour for white, now partial wheat will not rise as high as all white flour, so if you like your bread light and fluffy then only add one cup wheat flour and add two teaspoons of vital wheat gluten, which can be found at health food stores. I normally add 2 cups of wheat and the wheat gluten, then I make sure I give it an extra good kneading and give it an extra rising time, (punch it down and knead it a couple of minutes to get the air out, after the first rising, put it back in the bowl and let it rise a second time,) This normally results in a nicely textured loaf, but I will warn you that even with all of that you will find it still will not be as fluffy as white is.

3 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. Sue November 3, 2013 at 12:01 am - Reply

    I can’t find the recipe.

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