The Fresh Loaf

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DA Brownman's Yeast Water Potato Buns

Isand66's picture
Isand66

DA Brownman's Yeast Water Potato Buns

I am addicted to everything bread.  I guess there could be worse things to be addicted to.  I am constantly trying to push the limits and explore new avenues of bread baking so it was only a matter of time before I delved into the world of Wild Yeast Water.  My good friend DA Brownman has posted about his exploits using this technique on my favorite bread website, The Fresh Loaf.  His imaginative uses of this technique has finally convinced me to take the plunge so naturally the first recipe I had to try was one of his.

The idea behind Wild Yeast Water s similar to a standard sourdough starter but instead of developing flour and water and wild yeast into a starter you use water and fruit.  I followed his suggestion to use organic apples and raisins and after a week I had a nice lively Wild Yeast Water starter.

The recipe I followed was an interesting hamburger bun and cinnamon rolls recipe developed by DA where he used ramekins to let the buns rise and bake.  I changed a few things from his original recipe including building the Yeast Water levain in one step instead of 3 since my first attempt ended up in disaster when I miscalculated the amount of flour to add.  I also used European style flour from KAF instead of AP flour.

I decided to bake the hamburger buns free-form as rolls instead of in the ramekins which may have been a mistake.  I am not sure if I accidentally didn't measure the flour correctly, but the dough was extremely wet for a 58% hydration dough and was very difficult to handle and form into rolls.  Never the less, I forged ahead and before baking added some poppy seeds and toasted onions as toppings.  I also forgot to mention that I didn't have any dry milk so I left that out.

The final results were satisfactory for my first attempt using WYW.  The rolls were very tasty and had a nice sweet flavor from the WYW, honey and sugar.

Please visit DA's blog on TFL here :http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28622/yeast-water-hamburger-buns-cinnamon-roll-same-dough-kicker and give these a try for yourself.

Thanks again DA for your help and inspiration.

This post has been submitted to the Yeast Spotting Site here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/.

Comments

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

to wake up seeing your buns....eeerrr....well you know what I mean!  Don't know why your dough was so wet.  Total hydration was 66% with add ins that had a lot of water in them and without the non fat dry milk powder it would have only been 68%.  I guess some would depend on how wet your mashed potatoes were - I steamed mine and just mashed them with a potato masher- they weren't left overs with milk and butter and what not in them - that wasn't explained very well in the original post.   We did the 6 S &F's on a lightly floured work surface too and that should have reduced the hydration further.  I don't remember the dough being that wet but no matter, it looks like they turned out fine.

The crumb looks very good for buns, nice and open, soft and moist.  The spring must have been good since they rose very well to hamburger bun height.  I like your onions and poppy seeds too - especially the onions.  The crust looks a little pale?  I baked mine at 400 F convection which would translate to 425 F regular bake.

How do you think they will hold up for hamburger duty?\

I'm glad you first YW experience turned out well.  Let's see a shot of your yeast water!

Nice baking Ian.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Not sure why it was so wet, but I would guess that it was me not measuring the flour correctly.  I even added some extra flour when mixing and it was still way too wet.

The end result was still pretty good with a nice crumb and flavor for sure.

I baked them at 500 F for a minute while setting up for the steam and then for 425F. until done.  The bottoms were nice and brown since I cooked them on a perforated baking pan on top of my baking stone.

I just refreshed the YW starter and added a few cherries along with the apple pieces.  I am curious about what flavor if any the cherries will add.

I will post a photo of the starter tomorrow after it is done refreshing.  It certainly has plenty of rising power from what I can see.

Next up I will attempt to create a levain to use in combination with a SD levain.

 

Thanks again for your help and inspiration.

Ian

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

again for cinnamon rolls for my wife to take to some function tomorrow (an thinking we will bake it as a babka in a Bundt pan) and after it finished mixing in the KA for 10 minutes I noticed how wet it was too.  So I went back and checked the math for the add ins and sure enough, 20% of the butter was not in the wet and the entire amount was in the dry by mistake.  The real hydration is 77.28 % and now I am measuring out the flour used for the S & F's to see what the real hydration ends up at - for the first 2 S&F's we used 35 g which already dropped the hydration down to 75%.  I'm guessing it will end up under 70% when we get done.  Will make changes to the original post to reflect the reality when done.

Nice catch Ian.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

No worries....at least I know I didn't screw up your recipe!  I've had my share of screw ups.  The other day I measured some liquid and instead of putting the amount I measured in the bowl with the flour I put the amount I was supposed to throw away :).

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

we ended up using 70 g of bench flour to do the 6 S&F's which drops the overall hydration to 68% and no problems.  At least the recipe was right but omitted how much bench flour would be used.  It is all fixed now with delicious cinnamon rolls as a reward!

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Sounds great.  I could go for one of your cinnamon rolls right about now!

Thanks for filling me in .