Much as I dislike the exacting rules needed for making desserts (being more of an instinctive, mad-scientist sort of a cook), I enjoy the catharsis of making bread dough. Though the recipes are precise as to ratios of water and flour and amount of yeast, there are always external factors that come into play - for example, flour is different from country to country, and season to season, so sometimes you are going to need more water than stipulated. You need to adapt each time you make a dough recipe, based on touch and sight rather than amounts (which I find very enjoyable). Older recipes always say "knead until dough resembles a baby's bottom" which I found incredibly odd and unhelpful until I had a baby. It is really true that dough comes together from a straggly, stringy mess of flour and water to become something smooth and springy and very similar to the visual and feel of a small human's posterior.
Always remember that dough is incredibly forgiving. You can add to it, play with it, mess with the types of flour you use, let it rise overnight in the refrigerator to accommodate your schedule rather than following a recipe's rise time religiously - dough can take anything that you throw at it. Keep in mind though that dough and computers have one thing in common: they will feel your fear and act accordingly. In the case of dough this often means moving from baby's bottom to hockey puck upon cooking...
I can feel the eye-rolls from here but, give your bread makers and dough hooks a rest and try making this recipe in the traditional manner. Kneading by hand feels meditative and removes a lot of the week's stress. There is also something truly soul-satisfying in feeling a dough come together under your fingers into what it is supposed to be. The few extra minutes that hand kneading take can be deducted from the time that you would have allocated to wash all those extraneous kitchen tools that you did not have to use.
This particular dough can be shaped into hot dog buns as well as hamburger buns. I have made it with whole wheat flour and oat bran and even a mix of white and rye though of course this makes it less "brioche-y" than the original recipe. I have put grated cheese on the top at the last minute. It is incredibly versatile.
Makes about 6-8 buns or, in my case, 2 buns and cinnamon rolls the next morning.
3 1/3 cups regular flour
2 tsps instant yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1½ tsps salt
1 large egg
3 tbsp. warm milk
1 cup warm water
2½ Tbsps unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp olive oil
Measure all dry ingredients into a large bowl.
Mix the butter, water and milk together. Beat in the egg. Pour into the dry ingredients.
Using your hand, mix well. Once the ingredients have come together into a ball, pour onto a lightly floured bowl and knead until the dough does, as mentioned above, resemble a baby's bottom. All this means is that you want it to be shiny and springy to the touch - a few minutes is really all it takes.
Pour the olive oil into the dough bowl. Return the dough and flip it over so that all sides get a coating of oil. Cover it with a wet tea towel and leave it to rise for a couple of hours in a draft free place. You can also put it in the refrigerator and leave it until you are ready for it - for a couple of days at most.
After a couple of hours, tear equal-sized pieces off of the dough and roll lightly into balls. Place on a baking sheet lined with greased parchment paper. The balls should not touch. Let rise, again covered with a wet tea towel, for another couple of hours. Again, these can rise longer in the fridge if needed.
Preheat the oven to 400. Put the baking sheet in the oven and cook the buns for 13-15 minutes. If you are using dough that has been refrigerated for a longer proof time than 2 hours, allow it to come to room temperature before you bake the buns.
P.S. Before serving, split the buns in half and toast lightly so as not to end up with the disastrous burger that I ended up with in the photo above. I neglected to toast the bun halves and the burger juices seeped into the bread making for - still delicious - but sodden and messy eating. And a misshapen dog's dinner of a bun for purposes of photography.
Inspiration recipe, here.