It's Cheese Burger Bread, Not Cheeseburger Bread!

Have you every woken up on a Sunday morning to the sound of rain, slowly drank your blueberry coffee, walked through a wonderfully smelling community garden just to get to the local Farmer's Market, and then get home to spend your whole day in the kitchen? 

I'm livin' the life. And my house smells like bacon!

There are too many things I want to blog about from Sunday. Where to begin? Perhaps the slow cooker pulled chicken or the brussel sprout and bacon chips that I made for dinner? No- the piece that pulled this meal together and the highlight of my day: the bread. 

Let's start from the top...

Like all of my bread recipes, I started at the King Arthur website. Their recipes are pretty reliable, but if you're a practical and creative baker like myself, there can be and will be changes to every recipe- always for the better.

So I found this recipe for Cheese Burger Buns. I quickly realized that this bread has cheese in it and is for burgers, rather than simply being a bread for cheeseburgers. Oh, that King Arthur...

So let's chat about CHANGES. 

It's nearly impossible for me to simply use all-purpose white flour in any given recipe. It's pretty much against my religion. So if you're a health nut or you simply appreciate some good wholesome fiber, follow my advice- use 1 3/4 cup white flour and 1 3/4 cup white whole wheat. You'll thank me when you're 55 and have the stomach of an ox, unless you're already 55..... 

Just remember to add a tad extra water to the mixture.

OH, and this part is a must. So there's a reason as to why I don't have onion powder sitting in my cabinets and it is that fresh onion can be so much more flavorful! I didn't particularly want to spend $7 on a bottle of onion powder, so I took whatever yellow onion I had in my fridge and chopped it really finely. It was probably about a quarter of an onion, but you know, the more the merrier. Use what you've got! After sautéing it in olive oil, letting it brown up a bit, bringing out the fragrance, I let it cool and added it to the mixture!

So since we're talking about practicality, cheese? PLEASE. I had finely grated Colby Jack in my fridge, I chopped it up even more and used whatever I had left.

  Fry me some onion.         

Moar cheese plz.

All I wanted this Easter was for my dough to rise. 

Living in chilly San Francisco, I've been having a troubled relationship with yeast, even when it's activated properly. I typically check the dough about halfway through rising to find that no rising had happened. So here's a trick for those of us who live in the chillier parts: turn the oven (350 degrees) on for about 3-5 minutes and then turn it off. Place the covered bowl in the oven, with the oven door cracked. Leave it in there for a remaining time, or until the dough has doubled in size. VIOLA! Your yeast woes are out the dough! Sorry, that was terrible.

Pre-oven trick

Post-oven trick

I am not a scone!

End result? DELICIOUS. 

The sautéed fresh onion really added a nice, sweet onion flavor to the buns and the Colby Jack cheese complemented the onion but the flavor was still subtle. Because of adding the wheat flour, the rolls probably could have been a tad more moist. Next time, I'd play around with adding in more water to the mixture.

Oh, they're beautiful

So ladle on some slow cooked bbq pulled chicken (of course made with bacon), with a side of brussel sprout chips (moar bacon plz), and you've got yourself dinner and one delicious smelling house that'll make the neighbors jealous. 

#omnomnom

And if you didn't feel like reading all that, this 6 second video pretty much sums up my day in the kitchen- brought to you by my husband...