The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Kaiser Rolls

 

Sourdough, charged up and ready to, Rambo, the taste buds. 

Honestly, I’d like to tell you what it is that I did, but I’m guilty of playing in my dough on this bake.   Most likely I’d added some rye to my bread flour, forgotten purified water and used tap instead.  Who knows?  I sure don’t.  I’m sorry. 

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Oh, who am I kidding?  Sourdough is friendly.  If you treat it nicely.  If you don’t: 

Oops!

…..

But, I digress…..

Peter’s recipe called for a pâte fermentée.  I opted to use a portion of my sourdough, nestled and waiting in the lovely, Miss G.E.   Fresh, minced onion, was added to this particular item, a few days back, thus giving this particular bake* an added note of flavour.  Generally, I would caution anyone from adding onion to their preserved piece of dough, but I knew that I would be using the remainder of this batch for the specific Kaiser bake.  (NOTE:  fresh onion will darken after a few days in your unbaked dough, also, onion is wet, sometimes requiring you to adjust your flour content, markedly.) 

*The other noted adjustment to P.R.’s Kaiser Rolls:  I doubled his recipe and deleted one of the teaspoons of yeast requested per his instructions for the completed recipe.

I use Peter Reinhart’s recipes as roadmaps.  Sometimes I will  take a path not designated by his written word.  Not that this is ever necessary, it isn’t, and if I might note:  If you want consistency you should ALWAYS follow the directions.  I’ll go off on a tangent and ‘invent’  some sort of detour, but what the heck.  I’m too busy smelling the flours to worry over any warning signs.  Besides, I don’ t think P.R. writes warning signs.  Actually, I’m pretty sure he would encourage a wayward act from time to time, as long as it didn’t involve hurting any living thing, or as long as the intent was in good faith.  You know, as a noble act of kindness.  That form of waywardness.  Yeah.  I’m sure he’d approve.  ;)

And evidently my friends approved of this detour.  They attacked these rolls like a starving pack of wolves.

I have ‘fake’ scars to prove it:

 

My bread box is empty! 

….. 

 Flashbulb color coding:

 Eaten by a pack of wolves, the friendly kind:

 :)

…..

Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, was my guide.

~ by coffeegrounded on October 24, 2009.