Things wot I Made Then Ate: Bratwurst

Step 1: make hotdog buns.

The Cuisinart processor was used to produce a fast batch of bread dough starting with 3.25 cups of mixed whole wheat and all purpose flours, aprox 25% / 75% respectively. 1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast was included with the dry flour along with 1 +1/2 teaspoon kosher salt flakes along with two rounded teaspoons rubbed sage. The liquid was milk with 1 tablespoon butter amounting to 1 + 1/2 cups heated beyond body temperature which one can tell by feeling the heat of the glass container.

The dough was left on the counter overnight. It rose insufficiently, the result in the morning too dry and too dense. The batch was corrected by removing and discarding a portion and restarting using the dough as a starter for a new batch. Discarded instead of doubled because I didn't want to overload the machine nor did I want to end up with surplus dough this morning. The dough was cut up and returned to the Cuisinart along with fresh commercial yeast just for a refreshed kick, 1/2 cup hot water was added through the feed tube to loosen the old dough to a wet sticky mass. A/P Flour was added in increments until the dough pulled away from the sides and processed in pulses until a sample would stretch for the windowpane test whereby a small sample is flattened in the fingertips and stretched as a tiny pizza to test the gluten development and elasticity as if it were a window for, say, a goth dollhouse.

2.5 oz weighed segments of the dough were broken off, stretched and flattened, folded in thirds, flattened again, folded in thirds again, then pinched shut resulting in a tiny dough pillow. The puffy little dough pillows consisting of six folded layers internally and pinched on three sides are rolled on the work surface using the fingertips of both hands stretching the pillow shape out to the shape of a worm. A short fat worm. A big, short, fat worm.

This resulted in six extra ounces of dough, divided in two and themselves formed into two puffy pillow shapes, but not rolled into worm shapes, and kept separate from the hotdog buns because that tray holds only ten.

The dough worms were placed in a pan designed for East Coast style hotdog buns. The pan is designed for a single sheet of dough to be placed in the pan as a thick rectangular pizza, and cooked as a single flat loaf which is cut into strips after baking along the bases of the mounds that are formed by the indentations in the bottom of the pan. These hotdog buns shown here do not go along with the original purpose of the pan, rather individual hotdog buns are formed and kept separated by liberal brushings of olive oil, and that is just as easily done in a brownie pan except the bottoms would then be flat instead of curved as these are curved, as the top dome is curved also. So, oddly, the tops and bottoms are curved while the sides of the rolls are flat where the rolls abut against and tend to attach to adjoining rolls. Weird, innit. The pan does that.

Steam

The waiter at Bittersweet must have thought it odd for a customer of my demographic to interrogate so deeply about dinner rolls. For my part I was pleased with his answers and conversational celerity. When I asked how the cook managed such excellent thin crisp crust that veritably crackles and delicately flakes he answered without any apparent thought, "Steam."

"The stove has an built-in steamer, or does he spray it manually?"

"The stove has a steamer built into it. The first ten minutes is steamed."

"High heat?"

"Yes."

"Then that would be more than half the baking period of continuous steaming."

"Yes, for dinner rolls, more than half."

Impressive. I tried that technique before and it didn't work. I tried two things, in fact. Standing there with a spray bottle and cracking open the oven door and giving the whole chamber a series of sprits. I also used a lower rack to fit the oven with a tray of water that would hold until it evaporated. Those two things worked poorly. But now I have a new idea. In lieu of an internal sprayer I could use the oven's chimney to deliver dribbles of water directly to the chamber floor continuously for ten minutes thus keeping the door shut and having the water vaporize immediately on contact, especially important during those first few minutes of baking when the surface of the dough must remain elastic so that the expanding internal air pockets within the dough can expand outwards. I can now report the new technique works brilliantly, and I owe it all to our waiter who showed so much patience toward me.

They expanded so much by the intense moist heat that they broke through their sealed edges and partially unraveled in the oven. Lesson: seal the edges better.

Step 2: cook brats. These were seared in the pressure cooker with the lid off, then the water added, the lid attached, and cooked under pressure until I imagined they submitted. They could have used less pressure and less time cooking.