Gourmet Magazine's Perfect Hamburger Buns

On Mother's Day weekend, iGuy came to visit iChrissy for what was suppose to be a jam packed and exciting weekend. Instead, iGuy was greeted with an iChrissy that was terribly ill, tired as all hell and gross as can be. Being the sympathetic guy that iGuy is, iChrissy and iGuy hung around the house while iGuy made an attempt at "baking" as iChrissy watched from the sidelines:

iGuy's Comments: iGuy likes to cook. Roasting, braising, barbecuing, grilling, sauting and– these are all some of iGuy's favorite things. Not on the list and henceforth not one of iGuy'’s favorite activities is baking. This is simply because iGuy doesn’t much like to follow recipes or directions or anything that vaguely resembles an edict of any sort. Recipes are merely a structure or template, where iGuy will omit and add things as he sees fit, as well as, most importantly, "“eyeballing" most measurements. Who wants to measure out a ½ cup of red wine to throw into a Demi-Glaze reduction? Just pour it in, damnit! With baking, this cannot be done. Measurements must be exact and recipes must be followed verbatim or your final result will fail. But surely iGuy could eyeball some hamburger buns...right?

And so the story begins of iGuy'’s first attempt at baking bread. iGuy found a recipe for the "perfect hamburger bun" in the May 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine. If everything was to workout perfectly, a nice meal could be made with freshly baked buns and seared foie gras/black truffle burgers. iGuy was tempted to give it a shot (under the careful supervision of iChrissy). Confusion and mayhem had ensued from the first measurement to the last dough shaping. How will iGuy know if the dough has doubled? How thin does the dough have to be? Is this big enough for a hamburger patty? Do I have to finish the project? Exhausted, defeated, and anxious iGuy and iChrissy waited eagerly for the buns to come out of the oven.

After First Rise/Pre-Punched:

After Shaping and 2nd Rise/Pre-Baked:

Post-Baked:

The Conclusion:

The result was less than spectacular. Flat, disky biscuit-like pieces are what remained. The problem seemed to be over handling of the dough after the first rise. Perhaps iexcitementr excitment to "punch" the dough causing iGuy to brutalize the airy mixture. Or maybe it was iChrissy's critical backseat driving in the kitchen pointing and sneezing from afar. But whatever the probleinitial the inital attempt to baking was not a good one. The buns were tasty and buttery but not fluffy or tender as iCouple had initial An inital glance at the buns from various iPeople was always a comment like "nice looking biscuits" or "what's the biscuits for?". Thus iCouple's Black-Truffle-and-Foie-Gras Burger was to be eaten upon (*gulp*) Wal-Mart Bread. Which, by the way, was actually pretty good, toasty brown, fluffy, tender and all 8 buns for only bargain The bargin buns just begs the question: Why the hell did iGuy waste his time making his own biscuits..i mean, bread?

Rating: 1 out of 5 Mallets of Approval