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Attempting to create brioche hamburger buns w/o a mixer, need help

reevesdm's picture
reevesdm

Attempting to create brioche hamburger buns w/o a mixer, need help

To begin with, I'm just starting out trying my hand at making actual bread that's not more than pastry dough or pie crust.  I'm attempting to make the brioche hamburger buns following the recipe on https://stellaculinary.com/recipes/baking-pastry/baking/bread/hamburger-brioche-buns-large.  I attempted to do this by hand without a stand mixer, and followed the steps given by a follow up video, but when I get to the part before I add the salt, sugar, and room temp butter, my dough after proofing for a little over 30 minutes has already doubled in size and is super wet and sticky.  Even after adding an additional cup of flour and kneeding it for about 15 minutes, it was still a sticky wet mess that would not form a ball.  There are a couple things that I had to do differently that might've caused me my problems but I"m not sure.

 

1.  I tried to convert the ingredients from the grams it shows to cups/tablespoons.  I do not have a kitchen scale, and all my measuring tools are in cups/ounces.  I'm not sure if when I converted, say the whole milk, it made me have more wet ingredients than I should've used.  This also brings up my second possible problem.

2.  Since I"m just starting out with some actual bread making, I don't have bread flour on hand.  I've been using King Arthur AP flour for my other baking needs and haven't run into problems before.  I'm not sure if this is the main cause of my wet dough or if its the previous problem.

3.  After adding the flour to the scalded milk/egg/yeast mixture, the recipe called for it to rest for 30 minutes to hydrate the gluten.  I ended up leaving it for about 40 minutes, and when I got back to it, the dough had already doubled.  Is it possible that I left it sitting for too long?

 

Any advice would be helpful before I attempt to do this again

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

but it's been an hour already since the post.  Probably the measuring got screwed up but so what?  You can't go too far off base.  Brioche dough is a little soft and bennefits from chilling.  So place the dough bowl in another bowl of ice water and let it stiffen up a bit after you've added a little more flour.  Taste the dough to see if you have enough salt in the recipe.  Turn the dough over several times in the iced bowl to cool it down in the next 30 minutes or shape into balls and stick them around the cold bowl as you shape them.  Then continue on with the recipe.   Important is to deflate while shaping.  

It is important not to let brioche dough ferment too long in the beginning stages.  I had this happen to me often enough but deflate and shape and keep your proofing conservative.  The dough expands a lot in the oven.

reevesdm's picture
reevesdm

Its not that it was just a little soft, it was pretty unworkable, even after adding an additional cup of flour.  Im still a novice at this, but it was almost like the gluten just wouldn't form at all.  I couldn't even try the windowpane test described.  The dough would just fall apart when I stretched it.  Your last statement makes me think that the additional time I let it rest might've also been a major problem

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

See how this compares to your conversion  (the other choice would be to find a recipe in cups)  

Recipe ingredients:

 

  • 500 g    Bread Flour  4 cups  stir,scoop & level with a knife  
  • 300 g  Whole Milk   1 1/4 cups milk
  • 100 g   Egg (2 medium eggs)     This is the tricky part because eggs can vary so much, the way to get around this is to drop the eggs in the measuring cup and then add milk to make almost 1 3/4 cup total milk and egg.  You want 1.7 cups not 1.75 cups.  So the measure should be between 1 1/2 cups and 1 3/4 cups but closer to 1 3/4 cup.
  • 6 g  This is about two level teaspoons of Instant Yeast  (this is most likely where the recipe went over, too much yeast)
  • 15 g    one tablespoon Sugar
  • 20 g   Water (warm)   one tablespoon + one teaspoon
  • 8 g   Salt    1  1/2  teaspoons salt
  • 150 g  Butter (room temp, cubed)  Look on the grams of the package and make a decision in cutting the butter. 
  • 2  yolks    for brushing onto rolls before baking.
That would be north american cups, I couldn't see what country you're in.  Cups can vary from country to country.
reevesdm's picture
reevesdm

Wow yeah, if your measurements are correct, mine are way off from what my conversion tool told me.  Even taking into account that I modified the recipe for 8 large buns instead of 6, I was about 1.5 cups flour too light and half a cup of milk too heavy, which would probably be why it was really sticky.  Yeast wise measurement was fine, probably a little under your measurement.  Butter was fine I think too, but it might've been a bit much on that side as well.  I'll have to check for another conversion tool for comparison.

I think if anything, I need to break down and buy a kitchen scale that can do grams before trying this recipe again.  I'd love to get a stand mixer as well, but that's out of my price range atm.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

to add yeast later on, not with the egg & milk.  The dough had to sit 30 minutes without yeast.  !!!  :)

Steps 3 and 4 are separate.  Easy mistake, it just means the yeast got a jump on fermentation so adding a little flour to thicken the dough isn't a problem as long as it isn't too stiff.  The dough should still be a soft dough.  And it will be sticky but not runny or pooling.

I might think about shortening the refrigeration time as the dough has fermented longer than the recipe instructions.  You will still come out with decent buns.  :)

reevesdm's picture
reevesdm

Whats funny is the same place I got the recipe from above also posted a video of how to make this without a stand mixer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=796ZupzMvoI.  In that, he does add the yeast to scalded milk and eggs, then adds the flour and lets it rest for 30 minutes to hydrate.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

to screw up.  So what is the dough doing now?  If you add a good deal of flour, taste the dough to see if you need more salt in it.  

The only other thing I can think of is that in the video they used Active dry yeast which needs the warm milk to dissolve the protective coating around the yeast.

I used my hands all the time and this is the first time I've heard someone say that adding the yeast later is hard to incorporate with hands instead of a mixer.  Especially for such a small amount of dough!  

The Autolyse part is important.  Want to get that gluten going from early on and sitting there hydrating is good.  You can do other things with the time while waiting.  If you are a busy person and get interrupted, the autolyse without yeast can stand longer before you get back to it.  Just remember that once the yeast is in there, it has to be counted as fermentation time and thus reduce the dough counter time (1 hr to 1/2 hr) before chilling.

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

a mixer.  I rarely use a mixer.  I use husband power for mashing potatoes and the only thing i beat is egg whites so a light portable is good enough for home use.  The scale I use more.  Get one that is easy to read when a mixing bowl is resting on it.

reevesdm's picture
reevesdm

This was earlier in the day, so unfortunately I scrapped that dough in frustration.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

it into the fridge and wait.  Disasters make for great opportunities.  ...and all that butter!