There probably aren’t too many among us who aren’t busy and find ourselves at points particularly pressed for time.
At those point it would be particularly easy to head out for a meal out. Those meals in my view tend to be a bit of a waste – it’s not like most folks go out to a great restaurant for an awesome meal at these times… it’s more likely you’d head to a mid to low grade restaurant and plunk down between $7 and $30 for a “whatever” meal. What’s the point of that?
Instead there are some great last minutes meals that can be pulled together that are not only healthy but taste great – especially if you mix them up a bit.
Take a simple grilled cheese and shift it up by making it with the whole wheat baler twine bread add ham and spice it up with dijon mustard and hot pepper rings. You get a satisfying meal for a fraction of the price and with a fraction of the effort that it would otherwise take to drive yourself to a restaurant to wait for service. Plus, if you’ve cracked open a bottle of wine or tapped the keg of beer you can begin refreshing while you’re cooking.
Shifting from producing loaves of bread with a tried and true recipe to hamburger buns (or dinner rolls for that matter) is as simple as can be. Fundamentally we are only reshaping the dough and then baking it in the oven rather than allowing the bread machine pan to define the shape and the machine to do the baking for us.
The taste of summer – a burger with all the fixings piled high on a toasted whole wheat bun
Whole wheat buns are a great combination with burgers – instead of squishing into thin disk of wheat paste they hold their shape without being too dense and add a heartiness to a burger that just isn’t there with store bought fare. Baking your own not only provides unrivaled freshness but also allows you to determine the size of the buns… Baby buns for the wee folks, mama buns or even the papa buns that hold the largest burgers.
The process is so easy that you can’t go wrong and after you’ve had these you won’t want to return to store bought fare so get some fresh whole wheat flour and get baking.
Here we are using the standard Baler-Twine bread recipe, but setting the machine on the dough cycle instead of the bread cycle. If your machine’s dough cycle stops after the first rise reset it to the dough cycle and let the machine kneed the dough again before shutting it off and removing the dough.
Like so many seasonal or holiday baked goods hot crossed buns can be prepared any time of the year. It’s not like the bakery gremlins are going to jump out from behind the wheat barrel and confiscate “unseasonal” baking. But, all the same, there is something to be said about allowing traditions and the flow of the seasons to prompt us to mix up our culinary repertoire.
Let Easter (or now) serve as the reason to mix up your baking by preparing a batch of hot crossed buns. If you can make buns you can make hot crossed buns – the only difference is the addition of a few spices to our standard whole wheat yeast bread recipe along with a cup of raisins added just before the dough is kneaded for the second time. When the buns have cooled they get a tiny bit of icing. That’s it. Simple, easy, fast and a delicious difference. Make a batch and the bakery gremlins who make these disappear will end up being your family members.
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