My Big Fat Honey Wheat Hot Dog Buns ~ A flour discussion

My Big Fat Honey Wheat Hot Dog Buns ~ A flour discussion

I like bread just as much as the next guy but I want to make my own bread and I want a more nutritious version.

You’re off to a good start if you’re making your own food from scratch, rather than buying pre-packaged stuff. Getting the basics down can be a bit trying but with more practice, you get better and better.

I’ve been baking my own buns for a little while now and they’re really terrific but it’s time to up my game and make them healthier.

I’ve been watching and reading a lot of info about bread and flour lately. With the food industry’s treatment of wheat and flour, it’s kind of overwhelming to learn that the majority of nutrients are stripped away by the milling process. So, when you’re eating “white” bread, even homemade, if the flour hasn’t been fortified with synthetic vitamins and minerals, which doesn’t really make it better, you’re basically eating empty calories.

Nerdy facts I learned: In the milling process, the wheat germ and the bran (the outer shell of the wheat berry) are stripped away, leaving the glutenous part of the grain. Foods made with the grain by itself do not contain enough fiber, fat or nutrients to sustain a healthy diet. Breads and other foods made without the wheat germ and bran are digested very quickly and this taxes the body’s systems, thus causing many health problems such as diabetes II and obesity. It’s not that gluten is bad (back off gluten free fanatics) it’s just that there’s way too much coming in all at once. You need that wheat germ and bran to balance it all out.

So switch to whole wheat?

Unfortunately, most whole wheat flours on the market are inferior because they are processed with steel mills. The heavy steel components used for the milling process damages the wheat’s nutrients because of friction, which heats the flour. The bran and germ are separated from the grain because the majority of flour sold is white. To make it whole wheat, they simply add back some of the bran and germ. To top it off, most wheat now a days is bred specifically for a larger glutenous grain because that’s what’s most marketable. The bran has become harder and less digestible. Gheesh!

I should mention that sour dough, the real kind that’s made without the help of commercially made yeast is a completely different story but I’ll get to that in a later post once I delve into that arena. (very soon!) For now, I’m attempting to learn how to work with whole wheat.

I’m not going to swear off bread by any means because it is delicious and after all, it has been the main staple of the human diet for over 30,000 years. I don’t have the means to grow my own heirloom wheat, harvest it or grind it up myself, so to edge toward a more nutritious version of bread I went in search of a better product.

I found a stone milled whole wheat flour that has not been mechanically separated and put back together. I followed the directions on the package to make my very own, more nutritious bread. But… well, as you can see from that brick I baked above, stone ground whole wheat does not make a great textured bread for the average home cook unless you really know what you’re doing. It’s not bad but it’s very heavy and it could be better.

Alas, I decided to make a bread by combining unbleached white flour and stone ground whole wheat flour. Using my recipe for hamburger buns, I simply swapped some of the stone ground flour for the white. The dough rose the same and didn’t feel too much different.

However, the buns were not exactly hot dog material. They were too big and shaped mysteriously like weird, fat hoagie buns. Obviously there was a shaping mishap and perhaps too much gluten or yeast or they didn’t have enough of the whole wheat flour.

On the third try (yes, I said try #3 and I’ll spare you the details of the second inedible flop) I adjusted the flour ratios and other ingredients again and flattened the dough with a rolling pen after the first rise.

I folded the sides over to give the buns a better hot dog worthy shape.

And tucked the ends in to further shape them.

Hoping the third time would be a charm, I let them rise for an hour after shaping them.

Finally, they resembled something of a hot dog bun after baking them off in a 375 degree F. oven.

An egg wash is fine for hamburger buns but after trying that on my first set of hot dog buns, I found that a little melted butter on the finished product made them more appealing.

Though they’re still a bit fat, they tasted great and had a very good, fluffy texture, so I’m on to something.

With all the trouble that I went through to make a more nutritious bread after spending much time learning about flour, I have to say I am pretty excited. It’s quite satisfying to make a decent bread, given my big fat flops in baking but to make a bread that has more nutritional value for my family makes me happy. So adventure on, I will!

If you’re a foodie and you’ve spent time reading here, I hope you found this info useful or at least entertaining. Perhaps you’ll give stone ground whole wheat a try in your baking and let me know how it turns out. I’d love to hear from you.

Have a beautiful day and as always, keep it delicious!

Till next time ~ much love, Connie