For the 4th of July weekend, Alex bought us a bundle of meat from the Meat Salesroom. We had barbecue pork (which I mentioned before), and lots of hamburgers and bratwurst. I decided to make some good hot dog/bratwurst buns to stand up to the strongly flavored bratwursts.
I decided to try the recipe for Sourdough Hamburger Buns, but shape them appropriately for bratwurst. This recipe called for 2 cups of starter. It also called for 5 cups of flour. This seems like a huge amount! We needed a lot of buns, though, so I went ahead with it. I mixed together all the ingredients in my stand mixer, but the quantity was such that my stand mixer didn’t like trying to knead it together. The dough all stuck to the dough hook, rather than getting properly kneaded. I eventually decided that it had gone long enough, that it must be thoroughly kneaded (it had to be ready whether it liked it or not), and that it was time to let it rise.
After 3 hours rising time, I punched down the dough. I was actually in the process of a few other projects at the time, so it got to rise a bit more. I think total rising time was closer to 4 hours, overall.
I shaped half of it into roll/bun shapes, and put them on a baking sheet for a second rise. We were outside grilling during this rise, so I think they rose between one and two hours. I baked them at 375F for 17 minutes, until they looked done. I did the same with the other half of the dough later.
These were pretty good. They were misshapen because I don’t know the proper way to form rolls like this. I think they were a little big, even for brats, so I would definitely make them smaller. These had a nice texture. This dough yielded a much sweeter bun than the earlier sourdough bun recipe that I made. Alex even noticed how sweet they were. Overall, I prefer the other recipe because I don’t want my bread to be very sweet, but this was a useful way to use up a bunch of starter. In the future, I’d make the King Arthur Flour recipe from a few days earlier, but if you like to have sweeter hamburger buns, this is a recipe for you.
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