A homemade bun for le burger

There are some things worth making and there are some things better made by someone else. It goes without saying that the borderline between these two categories is entirely objective and open to dispute. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette recently featured a mother who makes her own toilet paper and her kids' diapers. I admire this woman's initiative and determination to put her crafting talents to good use, but I will never, under any circumstances, make panty liners for my girlfriends. This anecdote may not be in good taste for a food blog, but you have to admit that it illustrates my point. Some things just don't seem worth it.

This truism holds, well, true in the world of comestibles, too. Sometimes it's a certain ingredient that will make me change the page in my cookbook. Sure, I can get away with substituting beef stock for veal stock, kosher salt for gray sea salt, black cod for sea bass; but there's no good substitute for (too expensive) leg of lamb. Ditto for lobster tails. More often, though, it's some complicated technique that's just not worth it. I won't stuff sausage casings. I won't make cherry-tomato cups. Don't even try to talk me into puff pastry. My first and last effort was laughable and cryable at the same time and not in the "I'm so happy, I feel like crying" way you get when your college roommate walks down the aisle in a poofy white dress.

On the other hand, recipes I once deemed too frou-frou, fussy, and a waste of good time sometimes quietly beg me to give them a chance only to worm their way into my good favor. Homemade crackers, it seems, are sometimes in order. I'm now proselytizing homemade ricotta. And I'll never buy carbonated water again. I have a penguin in my kitchen that makes it for me when I press its beak.

But hamburger buns? Really? Aren't hamburger buns meant to be the edible equivalent of book ends? They satisfactorily fulfill their structural function by lending support to what would otherwise become a messy pile, but that's about it. Right?

Well, I have been disburdened of this naivete. Homemade hamburger buns, it turns out, are worth it. And it sort of makes sense, doesn't it, especially when you've gone to the trouble of gently forming your patties, babysitting them at the grill, and dressing them with fresh lettuce, tomato, and onion. This especially goes for any of you out there who--in defiance of burger purists, but in line with certain fancy-schmancy French chefs--are concocting burger variations studded with pine nuts or topped with foie gras. Le burger, the Times this week proclaimed, is now Paris-chic. The recipes featured in the accompanying article call for "sesame-seed hamburger buns" (the Cafe Salle Pleyel burger), "whole wheat English muffins" (the Cocotte burger), and no bun at all (the Yves-Marie Boudonnec). There's nary a homemade bun in sight. I doubt I'll be sourcing foie gras for my burgers (which is one of those ingredients that will make me pass over a recipe, not, I must admit, for ethical but for financial reasons), but I'll be one-upping the French with my homemade buns this summer.

This recipe is super simple. The only hard part is sitting around and waiting for the dough to rise, and when you have central air conditioning, that's not very hard at all. The dough is easy to work with and rises with gusto. When baked, the buns come out glossy on the outside, chewy on the inside, with a flavor and crumb similar to challah bread. I like best that they're slightly misshapen, which is the badge of domestic ingenuity. But the mottled surface and rippled edges of these buns also make them sort of Paris-chic. They're the culinary equivalent of a messy ponytail and smudged eyeliner. We'll call them Pittsburgh-chic. I'm not sure what that means but, for me at least, that alone makes them worth it.


Hamburger Buns
Adapted from Joyce McClelland, Gourmet, June 2008, via epicurious.com.
Makes 14-16 buns.


2 cups whole milk 1/4 cup warm water (105-115 degrees F)
2 (1/4-oz) packages active dry yeast
1/4 cup plus 1/2 tsp sugar, divided
1/2 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces and softened
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon salt
6 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1 large egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water for egg wash

You'll need a stand mixer with paddle and dough-hook attachments, and a 3-inch round cookie/biscuit cutter.

1. Bring milk to a bare simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat and cool to 105 to 115 degrees F.

2. Meanwhile, stir together warm water, yeast, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar in mixer bowl until yeast has dissolved. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If mixture doesn't foam, start over with new yeast.)

3. Add butter, warm milk, and remaining 1/4 cup sugar to yeast mixture and mix with paddle attachment at low speed until butter has melted, then mix in eggs until combined well. Add salt and 4 cups flour and mix, scraping down side of bowl as necessary, until flour is incorporated. Beat at medium speed 1 minute.

4. Switch to dough hook and beat in remaining 2 cups flour at medium speed until dough pulls away from side of bowl, about 2 minutes; if necessary, add more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. Beat 5 minutes more. (Dough will be sticky.)

5. Transfer dough to a lightly oiled large bowl and turn to coat. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm draft-free place until doubled, about 2 1/2 hours.

6. Butter 2 large baking sheets. Punch down dough, then roll out on a lightly floured surface with a floured rolling pin into a 12-inch round (about 3/4 of an inch thick; take care not to roll the dough out too thin or your buns will be too flat...I suggest erring on the side of caution here). Cut out as many rounds as possible with floured cutter and arrange 3 inches apart on baking sheets. Gather and reroll scraps, then cut out more rounds.

7. Loosely cover buns with oiled plastic wrap and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until they hold a finger mark when gently poked, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

8. Preheat oven to 375°F with racks in upper and lower thirds.

9. Brush buns with egg wash and bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until tops are golden and undersides are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped, 14 to 20 minutes. Transfer to racks to cool completely.

Buns can be frozen, wrapped well, up to 1 month.

Of myth and milk

This is a story about goats, cheese, and a man named Lester.

The goats belonged to my parents. They cleared our plot of West Virginia land of wild rose bushes and produced thick milk that smelled like goat hair when it was warm, but tasted good when it was icy-cold and poured over a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats. My mom also turned that milk into some good cheese. Lots of children know the rhyme about Little Miss Muffet who, until she was startled by a spider, sat happily on a tuffet eating her curds and whey. To this day, I’m still not sure what a tuffet is, but as a five-year-old, I could clearly imagine the pain of an abandoned bowl of cheese curds.

As for the “Lester” part of the story: He attended college with my parents. In those days, he played football for WVU. Lester’s later pastimes included crank-calling our house as Freddy Kruger and hogtying us kids just to see how long it would take us to wriggle free from the ropes. We begged him to do it.

Lester was also a myth-maker. One of his favorite tales featured me as a nearly-bald toddler hovering beside my mom while she milked the goats. Every now and then--so his story went--she would aim a teat in my direction and squirt a warm stream of milk directly into my open mouth. My responses to this tale ran from shocked glee (at the age of 6) to mild horror (at the age of 23 when Lester narrated it to my fiance).

Lester’s myth doesn’t get told much these days, but it echoes a far older and far grander one that I’ve told more than a few times to variously interested students. This myth also happens to be memorialized in bronze.

Classical myth has it that the founder of Rome and his twin brother—Romulus and Remus—were nursed by a she-wolf after being abandoned as infants. I’m pretty sure Lester never had the opportunity to visit this statue in Rome's Capitoline Museum, but I like to think that if he had, he would have laughed his Lester-laugh and found some nearby tourist to tell about the mythic past of a certain West Virginia family.

For better or worse, there’s no bronze statue commemorating this family myth. But when I’m stirring a pot of milk on the stove, I sometimes think I can see glimpses of it as the ricotta curds separate from the whey. Lacking the barn full of milk-heavy goats, I make do with the pasteurized stuff I can find at the grocery store. Pittsburgh’s Whole Foods stocks goat’s milk. It doesn’t smell like goat hair, but it makes a darn good ricotta cheese. Run-of-the-mill whole milk does too. Regardless of what animal provides the milk, your homemade ricotta will trump the stuff sold in your local grocery.

Ricotta hasn't been often counted among the sexier cheeses, but, at least according to this New York Times article, it's slowly becoming a "big cheese." That means it's no longer simply a ravioli filler or the mortar of lasagna layers. But I don't need swanky restaurant menus to convince me that fresh ricotta cheese deserves more. If you have any doubt, this recipe for crostini with ricotta and chorizo will set you straight. Seriously, this is one of the best things I've ever eaten.

Homemade Ricotta Cheese
Makes about 2 cups. Can be doubled.

Adapted from Julian Moskin's New York Times article (May 28th, 2008), which was adapted from Michael Chiarello’s Casual Cooking.


This process really couldn't be much easier. The hardest part is finding the cheesecloth. Just make sure not to substitute low fat or skim milk for the full-fat stuff. You’ll end up with something white and creamy, and it will taste pretty good, but it won’t be ricotta cheese.

2 quarts whole milk
2 cups buttermilk

1. Line a wide colander with cheesecloth, folded so that it is at least 4 layers thick. Place colander in sink.

2. Pour milk and buttermilk into a heavy-bottomed pot. Cook over high heat, stirring frequently. Scrape the bottom of the pot occasionally to prevent scorching. As the milk heats, curds will begin to rise and clump on surface. Once mixture is steaming hot, stop stirring.

3.When mixture reaches 175 to 180 degrees on a candy thermometer, curds and whey will separate. (Whey will look like cloudy gray water underneath a mass of thick white curds.) Immediately turn off heat and gently ladle curds into sieve.

4.When all curds are in sieve and dripping has slowed (about 5 minutes), gently gather edges of cloth and twist to bring curds together; do not squeeze. Let drain 15 minutes more. Discard the whey.

5. Untie cloth and pack ricotta into an airtight container. Refrigerate and use within one week.