Vermont Cheddar Bread

Another awesome recipe from the local bakers who wrote Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day!  This is a variation on the master boule recipe that incorporates Vermont cheddar. Now, I happen to love Vermont cheddar and my sister has to have it over-nighted to get her aged cheddar fix; who can really blame her?  We love Tillamook, so we used Tillamook, but being a Midwesterner, we can really dig into some local Wisconsin cheddar, too. It's all about what you have around or what lengths you will go for something you really cherish. Cheese, in my family, is one such staple that falls into the true love category. Try to take a piece of cheese from a child in this family and you will witness some tantrum activity, no lie.

Let's proceed.

The recipe:

• 1 cup of your favorite cheddar, preferably without the Orange Glow of unnaturalness (no color added)
• 3 cups of lukewarm water
• 6 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar

A Rant About Orange Cheese:
I like my cheese natural. Un-oranged, if you will. Most people don't realize that cheese isn't and shouldn't, be orange in color.  To get the orange cheddar most Americans are familiar with, food coloring is usually added to the cheese.  I don't like it, doesn't make sense (must investigate) and more importantly, it doesn't add anything to the flavor or appearance. Having said that, because of that, you should feel free to use it if you like it. If you like orange cheese, use it! And yes, I know Tillamook has orange cheddar, but we prefer their Black Label Aged Reserve White Cheddar and this is what needs to be sent priority mail to my sister from time to time because she can't get it where she lives and my Costco carries it year round. So we've struck a deal: I will mail her cheese and she will mail me lemons from her coveted and worshiped lemon tree.

General Dough-Dos:
I just put everything in the Kitchenaid and pulsed slowly until it was incorporated. I then put the whole mass in a 6 quart storage container and let it rise on the counter for about 2 hours or until doubled in size. I punched the dough down (for me this step is a must or it will explode in the fridge as it continues to rise, but see for yourself ;) and then put it in the fridge until I was ready to use it.  My dough for this recipe was 2 days old and made 10 huge rolls.

General Baking Instructions:
Preheat your oven to 350 and bake for about 30 minutes, depending on the shape of your bread and oven temperature. You should also have a baking stone or cookie sheet preheating on the middle shelf, with another baking sheet on the bottom rack to catch the water you will add to create steam when baking the bread.  This step is pretty important and I know because I've tried it with and without. With steam, creates the right result. Without, it is still good, but the crust will be missing that crackle pop that makes this bread oh so good!

This bread can be baked like a loaf but I chose to tear off chunks, roll palm size balls and let them rest for about an hour or so before baking to let them rise.  I rest the dough on a pizza peel heavily dusted with flour, but cornmeal is probably better to make it easier to slide them off onto the baking stone at bake-time.

Some Tricks to Employ, a Pep Talk:
When your oven is ready, prepare yourself by getting a cup of hot tap water ready to pour onto the bottom tray. This piece will take a bit of practice, so go slow and don't worry if you make a mess the first time.  I have a trick of making sure that the bottom cookie sheet is pulled slightly to one side of the oven so that you can dump your water in the edge of the "steam pan" without freaking yourself out, but as long as you get the bread on the stone, the water in the steam pan and shut the door without burning yourself, you are in business.

You will want to a) slide the rolls into the oven on the hot baking stone or middle cookie sheet and b) as quickly and safely as you can, dump the hot water onto the bottom cookie sheet and quickly close the door to capture the steam. "Quickly" is a relative term and safety should always come first, but the idea is to capture as much steam as possible before shutting the oven door. Do it in two steps if you must, closing the oven door, gathering muster, what have you... opening the door and dumping the water the last thing before setting your timer for 30 minutes. And of course, goes without saying, but your cookie sheet should have edges, right?  Otherwise, you're a right goof!

**It may not be so easy to "slide" the rolls and if they stick, help them off the pizza peel and arrange them on the stone. Mine didn't slide so well so I'll use cornmeal next time to make it easier to get them off, but no worries, if yours stick to your peel like mine did, just push them off with your fingers and arrange them as best you can for baking.  Mine became a little misshapen, but who cares? They were still perfect and yummy to me.  Don't forget to dump the water into the bottom pan to create steam before shutting the door and setting the timer!**

This recipe is indeed, a keeper. Seems to be a theme, huh?

Cookbook Recommendation and Credits:
Seriously, buy the cookbook by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg, MD. (I will add a link to the Amazon book as a sidebar; note to self. :)

Hot buns! Get your hot buns!

MMMM. All I can really say about this!  This lovely hunk of brioche dough is extraordinary actually.  I am putting up the recipe here for my sister who wants to see if she can raise enough money to refinish her pool by making, you guessed it, hot buns! Ok, really, this is only funny to keep saying but in reality this dough is more than hot buns.  It's a whole lotta love just waiting to happen and seriously, I think this recipe could make someone very rich...

Brioche dough is traditionally full of butter, eggs and whatnot.  This one is no different. However, the special part of this dough is that it is a no-knead dough. Brioche isn't a knead-y (lol! come on, that pun is awesome!) kind of bread dough anyway, but what sets this one really apart is that it is also no-fuss. And when I say no fuss, I mean it's Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day! no fuss.  I'm linking to this book on Amazon for those of you who wish to know more about where I found this treasure of a recipe.  Buy it. You will not be disappointed. I have cookbooks upon cookbooks that expound on the art of baking bread but you will never find a more concise, practical how-to cookbook no matter how high and low you look. I do not do it justice, but I find the need to promote it ruthlessly because it is written by a couple of local folks who I hope to meet someday as they live and play here in the Twin Cities like I do.

On to my magnificent experiment!

I made the brioche recipe from this book and wanted to play around a little bit with the recipes and see how well adapted it would be for all of the recipes I love. Can't say that I make too many hamburger buns in general, but since I had the dough ready and veggie-burgers were on the menu for dinner, I wanted to see if it would work.  I'm not a traditionalist by any stretch of the imagination but I wanted to see if it would create a hamburger bun that was close to what most Americans expect for in a hamburger bun. Ok, I wanted to see if it would pass the kid-test. And since I am close to a kid, at least at heart, I knew I could be an impartial judge.

By the looks of it, I hit the nail on the head, didn't I?  Maybe a bit large, but it fit the burger bill in a most excellent way!  I followed the recipe, took the dough out, rolled navel-orange-size balls of the dough, let them rest/rise for an hour and 20 minutes while I went to workout and well, I was super excited to see them go into the oven!  After the rise, I brushed an egg wash over the tops and sprinkled on the sesame seeds to get that requirement settled.  I baked them for 40 minutes at 350 degrees and then let them cool for about 15 minutes before slicing them for dinner.

HOLY BUCKETS!! I couldn't stop staring at these buns!  They were magnificent. Light, fluffy, but with a good tooth, not all soft and gooey in the mouth like some soft buns that will remain nameless and forever un-bought because I now have the ultimate burger bun! At last, I have found the bun of choice... The veggie burger was yucky, but I could likely doctor that up much better so if I had to grade the burger, I'd not really pass at all with that attempt at veggie-ness, but alas, "Tah-mahrra  is anutha daay, Scarlet.."  The BUN, though, let's be real, is superb!

The recipe is as follows:
3 sticks of butter, do not even question this, just proceed. :)
8 eggs
7.5 cups of all purpose flour
1.5 tablespoons of kosher salt
1.5 tablespoons of yeast
1.5 cups of lukewarm water
.5 cup of honey

I mixed everything, except the butter and flour, together in a large 4 cup pyrex measuring cup.  My butter was soft but not melted. The recipe says to use melted butter and mix this in with the other wet ingredients, which made perfect sense to me, but I didn't do it that way because I have a 5 quart mixer that gets really rowdy if I don't add the liquid ingredients a little at a time and I wasn't sure I could fit it all in so I left it out until the last minute. So I added this wet stuff to the flour a little at a time so as not to lose it all over the counter top in a whirly kind of moment... Once I could see I had room for the butter, I just added it, stick by stick to incorporate until I got it all in. No magic, it was too too easy.

I put all the dough into a 6 quart rising container and left it on the counter for 2 hours to rise. I then refrigerated it overnight and only took out the dough to tear off enough for 4 buns. I put the rest of the dough back in the fridge for something else wonderful later this week. (Hint: STICKY BUNS FROM HEAVEN on the next episode of Heartland Kitchen)

Let me know how it works out for any of you, the one of you... :)  All the credit goes to authors of this awesome little book, Jeff Hertzber MD and Zoe Francois, my personal heroes!!  Awesome job, you two!  This book is a keeper. The one you need on a dessert island where no prayers for Julia can be heard... no lie.