Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [11]
Make it or buy it? If you have time, make it. You can buy delicious bread and adequate bagels but you cannot buy a good hot dog bun.
Hassle: Slight, though you have to plan ahead
Cost comparison: Homemade: $0.17 a bun. Ball Park buns: $0.37. Sara Lee: $0.55.
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg
2¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup whole-wheat flour
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon instant yeast
Neutral vegetable oil, for greasing
1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the milk, butter, egg, flours, sugar, salt, and yeast and knead with the dough hook until you have a smooth dough.
2. Scoop up the dough, grease the bowl, and return the dough to the bowl. Cover with a clean, damp dish towel and let the dough rise. It will be puffed and ready in about 1 hour, but you can leave it longer.
3. Gently deflate the dough and divide into 10 pieces. Shape each lump of dough into a petite bun-sized log. Make them as neat as you can, because every flaw in the design will be exaggerated in the finished product.
4. Place on a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet, 1½ inches apart. Drape with the same damp towel. Let rise for 30 minutes. This is dough with Frankenstein inclinations, so don’t let the buns rise much longer than 30 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
6. Bake the buns for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden. The original recipe says to cool the buns, but I would eat them soon. Like, immediately. If you don’t eat them immediately, store in a plastic bag at room temperature for up to 5 days. Freeze for longer storage.
Makes 10 buns
HAMBURGER BUNS
Because hot dog buns were such a revelation, I assumed the same would be true of hamburger buns. This didn’t turn out to be so. In my experience homemade hamburger buns are always too stiff and substantial, not fluffy enough. Here’s the issue: Unlike hot dogs, hamburgers are sloppy and effusive and you need a bun to work as both a sponge to soak up juices and a mitt to hold the burger itself. While I can bake a really outstanding mitt, it never quite doubles as a sponge. I have to hand it to Big Food: it has mastered the spongy bread.
Make it or buy it? Buy it. (I recommend the Crustini sandwich rolls from Francisco. Since giving up on trying to bake my own, I’ve become very brand loyal.)
OIL SPRAYS
For all recorded history until 1959, when adman and entrepreneur Arthur Meyerhoff, Sr., and a partner began marketing the first nonstick cooking spray, people got by without spritzing oil out of a can. Meyerhoff named his product PAM (it stands for Product of Arthur Meyerhoff) and cooking sprays are now ubiquitous. My mother never bought PAM and I hardly ever use it, as I never got into the habit. But my husband cannot live without. According to him, we go through two cans of PAM a year at $3.00 per can. According to the label, a can provides “529 ¼-second sprays.” Or: six ounces of canola oil, soy lecithin, dimethyl silicone, rosemary extract, and propellant.
The oil in that can is by my estimate worth about $0.36 and what you’re paying for is the functionality of the disposable can. Is there a cheap, reliable, reusable alternative? Ten dollars will buy an aluminum canister that you can fill and refill with the oil of your choice. I bought one, loaded it up, started spraying, and noticed immediately that the spray wasn’t quite as powerful as PAM’s. If we use twelve ounces of oil spray in the first year, as our track record suggests we will, we’ll spend $10.72 on spray oil for the year versus $6.00 for PAM. The first year we’re in the red, but in the second year we go into the black, and every year after that we go deeper into the black.
Unless, of course, the canister breaks. I have quietly noted that whenever it’s sitting on the counter or the table, my ten-year-old son, Owen, must play with it. It is,