Thursday, June 18, 2020

an ambitious bread-making project

This looks like way too much work:


The video concludes with brioche. I generally like brioche, which is soft and sweet, but I think it's become a painfully bad cliché when it's used for hamburger buns. These days, pretty much anyone who tries to upgrade his burger by using supposedly "better" ingredients seems to gravitate blindly toward brioche as the go-to frou-frou bread. At first, this wasn't an issue, and truth be told, I don't think brioche buns are bad at all, even now. My point is simply that, with everyone turning to brioche for his or her burgers, the bread has become something of an eye-roller, showing lack of imagination. Luckily, the above video shows no brioche burgers.

Since I'm waxing snobby, you might wonder what sort of bread I'd like to see used for burgers. I admit I'm just as unimaginative as the people I'm critiquing: I see nothing wrong with a good ol' Martin's potato bun. Those buns are my favorite. Otherwise, homemade buns are also good; Charles's recipe for buns works excellently, and I'm curious about using Maangchi's soft, puffy roll bbang with a wide, flat, thoroughly charred burger. I think Maangchi's bread might provide for a great textural contrast with the beef and vegetables in a typical burger (that'd be lettuce, pickles, and tomatoes for me, thanks—no fookin' onions).

So there's your food-snobbery for the day.



1 comment:

Charles said...

I am honored to be mentioned in a food-snobbery post.

And I do generally subscribe to the "let's not over-complicate things" theory of doing baked goods. The cold, hard truth is that if it is too much of a hassle, you're not going to do it. At least you're not if you otherwise have a normal life to live.

My project for the upcoming weekend is an oat bread. I've finally gotten my hands on some oat flour, and I have some "extra thick" oats from Bob's Red Mill for texture. It will be a rich bread, too, with milk and butter, so it should be good.