and things went downhill from there

Now that I have completed a full year of retirement, I have decided to embark on another adventure in frustration and heartbreak by trying to take and post a picture every day this year.

In anticipation of my pending failure, I decided to make my first picture one of my last failures in 2019.



I made buns yesterday to go with the ham & bean soup we're having for dinner tonight. I found an on-line recipe for crusty rolls that looked promising, and I decided to give it a try. The first thing I did was convert the volume measurements to grams so that I could test out a new technique I've learned that is supposed to yield bread/buns that take longer to dry out.

The trick is to take about 15-20% of the water/flour (by weight) and combine them in a 5:1 ratio, whisk them, and then microwave them to ~140F. Once this gooey mess cools, you add it to the bread along with the other moisture and make it as usual.

The mistake I made yesterday was in blindly following the recipe without actually checking the consistency of the dough before I set the stand mixer to kneading it. If I had just paused before that step, I'd have noticed that it had too much moisture, and I could have corrected it with a bit more flour. The end result was a dough that was more appropriate for brioche than crusty rolls; it was sticky and hard to work with, resulting in buns that turned into a blobby, flat mess in the oven.

The exteriors did not form the right crust either, likely because of the dough being too wet. They still taste good, and they make fantastic toast, but they are not what I was trying to make.

I added a hand-written note to the recipe to remind myself to check the dough for moisture before I am too far into the process next time. I will probably just start off with less water than the recipe calls for and add it in small bits until the right texture is achieved.