April 1, 2014 - 11:56am
hard roll or kaiser roll
years ago in CT my dad was a baker and the small bakery made that were called hard rolls, these were a nice thin but crispy/flakey egg shell thin crust with poppy seeds and the star shape on top, these were light rolls and not heavy or dense, they were unbelievably delicious and left crumbs all over the table when eaten. Sadly they are a thing of the past, they were popular in the NYC area, anyone know anything about them?
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Still very poular in central and westen new york. Try the light enriched dough recipe from inside the jewish bakery with the longer bulk ferment stan talks about. Give them an egg wash too even if your not putting seeds on them. That recipe produces the roll your after.
And let them final proof to 2.5 almost to 3 times where you barly get any oven spring. That will give you the light crumb and nice thin crust.
manna, where do I find the recipe for the roll, where is the "Jewish Bakery", can you give me a link to it. I did work in the bakery which made the rolls for a year, I don't know the recipe but one thing I remember, we would make the roll and put the star side down on a pan with parchment paper that had the poppy seeds, they would then go into a metal box with a low heat flame heating water on the bottom and creating a moist warm environment inside. This was done mid afternoon on Saturday, the bakers would go home right after and come back in after midnight and mid morning the rolls were taken out of the proofer and baked so they would be ready for the hordes of people that would come in after each church service, this was urban CT in the mid sixties. We used egg wash on the Jewish rye but not on these rolls, and to think they were 60 cents a dozen!!!
Manna may be referring to the book, Inside the Jewish Bakery. http://www.insidethejewishbakery.com/ If not my appologies.
You got it darwin. The book is great. I think you will find alot of the recipes in that book that the bakery used to make.
thanks Darwin, I'm sure that's it, I did a quick scan online and found the book and a picture of the cover, the hard roll is on the cover! Their website had some great info as well, you have no idea of the memories these rolls bring!
from Stan directly from the website he will autograph it for you. Sadly, Norm Berg passsd away not long ago but I do go online just to see him shaping real Kaiser rolls the old way - a classic and worth every bit looking it up. Happy baking.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/kaiserrolls
thanks so much, I noticed the malt, I bought some diastatic off of Ebay a while back, the Jewish Bakery website said malt does for yeast what steroids do for athletes, also on the roll recipe the presence of steam, this is cool stuff, I hope my 9" pizza stone comes in today for the bottom of my dutch oven, the stone will allow me to add some water to the bottom of the dutch oven without getting the bottom of the product wet and also keep from burning slightly the bottom, I'm putting the dutch oven in my wood stove at least till wood burning season is over here in Vermont. Hey dabrownman, I saw an online youtube that Mini Oven has above with the guy doing a karate chop and keeping a thumb in the same place method, is that Norm?
Norm karate chopping his Kaiser rolls. A classic.