BBA Kaiser like rolls....

I spent the morning finishing up my Kaiser Rolls for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge.  The Italian Baguettes were skipped, but I plan on trying to do them soon.  It's hard to get similar results when using 100% Whole Wheat flour, so this time I tried something different and I think it worked quite well.  I was able to follow the baker's percentages in the recipe, and didn't have to change anything!  Here is what I did....

 

 The first picture is my taking my freshly ground White Winter Whole Wheat and sifting it.  The next is a picture of the sifted flour and the bran in two separate bowls, and then in the back ground you see a close up of the bran and the sifted flour.  I took some of the bran and used it as a filler in my hamburger patties for tonights dinner.  Normally I just fry up the meat in patties, and don't add anything to it.  It's been years since I put anything else in a patty, but I decided to add wheat bran, 1 slice of WW Flax bread, onions, egg, oregano, and worcestershire sauce into it.  Wish I had gotten a picture, because they were really really good!

In the first picture above you will see the preferment, which is all mixed up and ready for a 1/2 hour autolyse.  I find that allowing it to rest, before kneading always helps my dough tremendously.   It also helps me to see if I have added to little or to much water or flour.  Then I weighed the dough, before putting it into a dough bucket to rise.  It was really cold yesterday and today, so I decided to warm my dehydrator with the dough inside for about 1/2 hour.  It worked GREAT, after an hour I put it in the fridge overnight.  That is Arnold, my sourdough starter which I also gave a little warmth to, before putting into the fridge.  It doesn't take much warmth in there to really make the yeasties take off.

This morning I cut my preferment into pieces, and warmed the dough up for an hour.  I again used the warm box, and it worked really well.  My dough was warm in an hour, and quite poofy, which is a lot better than having to wait a couple hours before I can get started.  I then combined the pieces with the dry ingredients, and put the liquid in.  I expected to have to add extra liquid, like I normally do with the WW flour, but according to the baker's percentages it took exactly the amount asked for and turned into a really nice dough.  I let it autolyse for 30 minutes, then kneaded it for about 5 minutes.  This gave me a really nice feeling dough.  The center picture is after I had kneaded it for about a minute.

I oiled the bowl, made the dough into a boule, and then let it bulk ferment for 2 hours.  I heated the box for 1/2 an hour with the dough in it, and this gave me a real nice poofy dough when the two hours were over.  Using my scale I split the dough into 3 oz chunks, and then rolled them into small logs.  I let this rest for a while, and then lengthened them till they were approximately 16 to 18 inches long.  Then I shaped them into a Kaiser roll shape, this link takes you to King Arthur Flours pictures of how to shape the rolls if you don't have a cutter.

I placed them onto a cooking sheet lined with parchment paper, and proofed them for 90 minutes.  I have no idea why the book said to flip these over after 45 minutes, but I didn't bother with that and simply let them rise the full amount of time.  At this point I decided that I would like poppy and sesame seeds on some of them, and rather than simply using water to hold them in place, I would use an egg wash.  It worked really well, and they turned out exactly like I expected them to.  The dough inside is soft, the outside is chewy, just like a kaiser roll should be. These are great rolls, and I will make them again sometime.

Now for the controversy!  The reason I say they are a Kaiser LIKE roll, is because not long ago I was told by someone that it's not the shape that make's these a Kaiser roll.  It is the shape, but it is also the ingredients. 

•  Wikipedia says, "It is a typically crusty round roll made from flour, barm, malt, water and salt, with the top side usually divided in a rotationally symmetric pattern of five segments, separated by curved superficial cuts radiating from the centre outwards."

In this recipe we used both oil and egg, so does that eliminate it from being called a Kaiser roll?  Since I am unsure, I have decided from now on I will always call them Kaiser like or Kaiser shaped rolls.  This way I will not offend anyone!

I really wanted to tell you all about King Arthur Flour, and the clay baker I received for Christmas.  I noticed a few weeks ago that the handle seemed to feel like it was giving way when I picked it up.  My husband later found a crack at one end, and I contacted King Arthur Flour and asked what I needed to do to get it replaced.  I really really like my clay baker, so this was a MAJOR big deal to me.  They sent me a nice short letter asking for the original order number, which I sent back to them.  Next thing I know I received a receipt in the mail saying my new clay baker was being sent out!  No muss, no fuss, just totally fixed the issue, boy was I impressed!  If you have never checked out their blog, you really should.  They have really great recipes with instructions including pictures etc.  No, they do not pay me for this, I am just very happy with the dealings I have had with them and want to share a great resource.

Links to my fellow baker's in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, 2011!  Here are links to their versions of this bread.  They are all very talented baker's, who have gotten together to share their results from baking the Bread's in Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice.


Our host Chris at A Ku Indeed
Jim at OvenMinded
NancyB at Bread&Cake&More