The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

potato buns

Isand66's picture
Isand66

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/.

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