1 Buttery Dough, 3 Perfect Recipes | Claire Saffitz | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking

the most physical activity I've done in a year Hi everyone, I'm Claire Saffids. I'm here today for another episode of Try This at Home. Today I'm going to show you my recipe for an all-purpose enriched

dough

that takes the The best of all worlds is Japanese milk bread and brioche, very, very soft, super pillowy, it's just a little bit sweet and it gives you

this

incredibly texture light, almost silky, the base recipe for

this

enriched

dough

is to simply turn it into two loaves, but i. I'll also show you hamburger buns and then I'll also make sweet pistachio buns in the morning just to show how versatile it is and how it can go sweet and savory.

An enriched dough is a dough that basically has some type of fat added to it. It's as if a lean dough is a sourdough in which all we work with is flour, water, yeast and salt. An enriched dough often has fat, which means that eggs are added to have the yolks and thus adding richness to the dough. or sometimes it can be butter, sometimes it can be oil, so today we're going to do all of that, we're going to add oil, eggs and butter, even with all those types of heavier ingredients because of the technique we're using. it still creates something so light and fluffy and that's what's amazing about this recipe.

It is a kind of preliminary step that we are doing before mixing the dough. This is something called tangjong. This is a technique used in Japanese milk bread but also in There are many different types of

recipes

to increase the overall ability of the dough to retain moisture and liquid, resulting in a very soft, pillowy dough and works very, very well in this style of bread. A tongzhang is something like a roux. a mixture of flour and liquid that is cooked on the stove so that the fire is not lit. I'm just going to whisk them together and now when it's all mixed together and smooth, I can turn on the heat while this mixture cooks, the starches gelatinize and the whole mixture will thicken quite a bit and completely transform and then this will be added to the dough.

I liken it to a smooth mashed potato, that's what you're looking for, so now it's starting to thicken. It goes from liquid to this kind of thick paste very quickly and I took it off the heat. Now I'm going to transfer this mixture and scrape it into the mixer bowl. The next part is very important. This mixture is. hot I don't know if you can see it but steam is coming out I really want to let this cool completely you will regret it if it's hot the dough basically won't come together properly if you want to do this straight through you I can speed up the cooling process a little by throwing it in the refrigerator and stirring occasionally, so that's what I'm going to do and now that it's cooled it's pretty much the same texture.

You can see it's a little thick now. Let's go ahead and mix everything well in the bowl on top of our tangjong. The next thing I'm going to add is a little bit of oil. You can use vegetable oil, olive oil, any type of oil you have this purpose for. just to add a little fat that is liquid at room temperature, this means you can leave the dough, whether it's hamburger bun or just the bread, on the counter for many days and it won't dry out, I mean it's not a ton of sugar, but it's also balanced with a healthy amount of salt, so it's kind of a flavor and texture enhancer, so I'm using active dry yeast in this recipe.

I am not going to try this yeast, I will not drink it or dissolve it. in a warm liquid, you know, in my entire baking career, I have very rarely found active dry yeast that wasn't alive and then the rest of the flower is fine, so I have my dough hook on the mixer, so this Will help us. develop a lot of gluten, which is the key here. I want to develop a very, very strong dough, the dough rises so much in the oven if it didn't, if it wasn't a strong dough, it wouldn't be able to support itself as generally speaking it rises.

I like to make

recipes

by hand, so this is a recipe you'll want to use a stand mixer for. If you have superhuman strength and patience, you can try it by hand. I don't recommend it. This is what happens when you mix bread dough. It almost always looks very dry at first, it takes time for the flour to absorb all the liquid and then you will see that there is quite a radical transformation in the texture, for anyone who has even a passing interest in making bread I would say buy one. I think these cost a dollar.

This is called a bowl scraper. There are many things similar to bowl scraping in this recipe because it is a very soft dough. You can really see it in this glass bowl. I'm just going to scrape the sides. Now that this dough has come together and I had it at low temperature, I'm going to put it back in. Now I'm going to leave it at medium-low temperature, a little faster than what we had before and we're going to change the clothes. do something, come back once or twice, scrape down the sides, but this will take a good 12 to 15 minutes, if you let it go low and slow, it will be a very dramatic transformation in texture, it looks good, so first of all. you can see the dough has built up around the hook but it's not wiping the sides or the bottom so you can see you know it's sticking that's normal it's okay it's mostly sticky and just a little sticky I can touch it and it won't stick to my finger, but if you told me it really works on it, it would stick a little.

The dough looks good, let's start adding the butter like I said at the beginning. This dough is incorporated. Techniques for different styles of bread. We made the tongshong with Japanese milk bread and this is more similar to the steps of a brioche recipe and I'm going to mix it on low heat, it's kind of the enemy of this process. I want the butter to be cold, that's very important. We want this to mix on low speed until we see the butter disappear and then I'll add the other half. There's a lot of this in the recipe developing, as if you were sitting and watching it.

Very good British baking program. I do what they do too where I like to fan it and it comes out of the oven. I see that the butter has been completely absorbed and I'm going to add the other half of the butter, but I'll give it a try first. a scrape, okay, I'm not telling you to sit here for half an hour and mix because it's funny or fun, it's important, you can see the dough is now completely gathered around the hook, it's not sticking to the sides, now I want to increase the speed to medium low and let's give it a final mix in the bowl.

We are going to obtain a soft, beautiful and super flexible dough. We made brioche by hand in culinary school and you just have this like a super sticky mask that you're like you're buttering it and it's like it's working and it's folding back on itself like it's eventually coming together, but yeah, and I'll show you proof. to know if you have mixed. Whether it's enough or not, I'll take it out as a golf ball sized chunk. This is called a window pane test. You may see this in bread books, especially on how to bake sourdough, and I'm going to work it outwards and the idea is I've built up enough gluten and the dough is extensible enough, meaning the ability to stretch I can get a very, very thin sheet of dough that will allow light to pass through it and not break, so I want to see if I'm still there, it actually looks, I think I'm there, like I'm getting quite thin and I can't tell It's breaking, so I'm going to take it out of the bowl.

Now what we want to do is let this mass pass through. Your first rise usually recipes with active dry yeast go through two rises so the first one is called bulk so it's just the whole huge dough so I'm going to fold this dough in half a few times because I want to get kind of a smooth surface and then form a kind of nice neat package. You can see that first of all the texture is not sticky or even that sticky, the butter has lubricated it so it has a slight sheen if your dough is shiny and greasy it is probably too hot just roll with it, It will probably be fine, but know that you don't want this dough to get too hot.

This dough has a really wonderful texture. It's very tactile. It's very fun to play with her. I'm going to put this back into the bowl. I'm going to let it sit at room temperature for about half an hour and that's because I want the yeast to start releasing those gases and metabolizing some of them. starches and sugars and then I'll transfer it to the refrigerator and let it continue and finish rising very slowly in the refrigerator and that's because it's much easier to work with this dough when it's cold, it's like we get it 30 minutes at room temperature and then It slowly finishes rising as it cools and hardens in the refrigerator.

You can leave it overnight and in fact last night I made some dough that is ready to use but if you want to bake. the same day just make sure you leave it at least four hours in the refrigerator and that's enough time for the dough to finish rising and also chill to the center four hours minimum up to 24 in the refrigerator. I have two standard loaves. I'm going to line the molds here with parchment paper, so here's some room temperature butter. I'm going to brush the bottoms and all the sides. One way to show off the really wonderful texture and browning properties of this dough is to bake them.

I eat plain breads and then you can choose to do whatever you want with them. You can use it for sandwich bread. You can make bostock, which is styled like a twice-baked brioche, which is a delicious and very easy cake. You can take it alone for toast. for breakfast, which I did a lot while I was testing, I like to line loaf pans with a piece of parchment that goes across the bottom and the longest sides, the width of the parchment is the same as the width of the pan on the bottom and then you just put it in and now we've greased it so the parchment will stick to make it smooth, make sure there are no air bubbles and now not only are you guaranteed that nothing will stick to the bottom, but you also have a means of lifting it up.

Take out the dough with these two little pieces that hang down I'm also buttering the parchment not because it's going to stick but because that butter on all the surfaces is going to contribute to the browning and I want it to be golden brown and I eat a little bit. a little bit even a little bit crunchy so that my breads are ready. I can put them aside. I'm going to use this scale to divide the dough into 16 equal pieces and basically I'm going to get eight small pieces that make up each one. bread, so I'm going to show you how it works, first of all, look at how beautiful and domed it turned out.

It basically doubled in size. I'll take it out of the bowl and place it on the surface. I'm going to pat the dough. and try to eliminate some of the gases, this step will basically help refeed the yeast so that all those yeasts that are living organisms, when you do this step, it will basically help them come into contact with new forms of food, you know, new. sugars and starches, so that will be helpful in our second rise. I am going to use the scale to measure 16 equal portions. I'm going to make eight servings per pan.

Okay, now I have all my portions, so now I go. to show you how to form each piece into a nice tall ball, they will rise and fuse together in the oven like a cute little patterned loaf if you just created something that looked more like a loaf shape. it's less predictable and the way it expands sometimes becomes like a crack down the middle or splits, this gives the bread a natural seam where it can start to separate in the oven, so I have a piece of dough here. I realized that this side is softer. I can tell it was part of the dome that was exposed on top.

This side is softer. This side is a little more speckled, so this is what I do. I flatten it and it is smooth side down. so now that I have this kind of regular shape, they're kind of triangular rectangular, now I'm going to go around and I'm going to tuck all the irregular edges towards the center, so I'm just going to go around. and fold everything in and now I want to bring all those edges together and pinch them so you can see now I have this little ball shape and it almost looks like a head of garlic or kind of a very fat teardrop, now I'm going to put this time on the surface with the seam down, like this, taking one hand and I'm cupping it around the dough, so my hand is shaped like a claw and it's resting lightly on the dough and the movement here is a little bit quick. circles and I, as I move the dough in a circle, I also drag it across the surface, you will feel the ball of dough start to tighten and become taller, it will sit a little higher, like the seam side. there's the dome side and then it just goes straight into the pan, okay, we've got all the dough balls in their formation and they're ready to go, these have to ferment, so there's a little bit of expansion that occurs during fermentation. and then there's still more expansion that happens in the oven and that's called oven spring, so it actually grows a little bit in size.

The fermentation time has passed approximately one hour. These appear to have doubled in size. There really are no spaces between the dough balls. There is something called a push test, which is a means of determining if the dough has fully fermented, so I'm just touching the topof the dome, press with your finger and that looked pretty good. You can see there's my little fingerprint there, but it's mostly reappeared. The last step is to give them a beaten egg and then try to brush gently because you don't want to pop any air bubbles that are under the surface, okay, you will see this wonderful almost cartoon-like shape of bread, they smell very, very good, there are countless uses for this style of dough, it's so versatile, I don't know, it's like I can't make hamburger buns, but it works great.

That's what we're going to do today. I'm going to make some hamburger buns. I have a dough that I made last night. You can see that I got super puffy in the refrigerator and it's very firm because all that butter cools, so you want to work with this dough while it's cold because it's much firmer and it's easier to handle, so when it comes to forming . stage, try to work at a certain speed. I want to divide this into 10 pieces of dough, all the same size, to get 10 burger buns for a four to six ounce burger of any kind, so I have two baking sheets here, but I'm just. using a little bit of neutral oil and brushing the baking sheets, okay, it's similar to what I showed you before.

I want to do the same thing because when you shape something correctly you get a nice, even rise and I want a round, beautifully domed burger bun, okay? Simply repeat that process with the remaining pieces of dough. Here are the 10 buns that need to rise again. Now this particular dough likes to rise with a little bit of moisture. I just have some tap water here and I just go. Basically, they like to spray a little water on it so things don't dry out. These need to sit for a good while and I'll come back and show you what they look like when they're done. to go i will show you what they look like here is the test to know if they are approved or not there is a slight shake to know that they are sturdy enough when i push them i can see the dough slowly comes back and there is a slight indentation so that they are ready just makes me think of the McDonald's commercials with the sesame seeds

perfect

ly placed, you know they're going to go in the oven, one tray per rack and then after 15 minutes I'll rotate them and there will be between 20 and 25 total, it's easy to tell when they're done, we're just looking for a uniform golden brown color.

They became so domed, so big and very excited, eat them the day or the next day and then freeze them. Everything you don't eat freezes so well that it takes some power tools upstairs, but let's move on. What are they cutting? If I wanted to get a broom and I'm back, I think a sweet cinnamon roll. roll or sticky bun is perhaps one of the best applications of this recipe because it is very soft and what I don't like about the typical sticky bun or cinnamon bun is that they dry out and become very hard and with this dough they stay. really soft and pillowy even after they've cooled oh dear it's okay I'm hurrying this reminds me of my first apartment in New York when my roommate and I had a theory that our upstairs neighbors liked it have a bowling alley, it turns out that I In fact, I think I was like a bodybuilder and I was dropping weights on the wooden floor.

I'm having flashbacks, so this gives you a nice, generous layer of butter, so now I'm going to prepare the filling. I have a cup of pistachios here that I roasted so you can finally chop them. I like how the pistachios and filling give a sort of green swirl to the final bun. What I like is a fine cut. I'm going to put together the rest of the filling it's a pretty austere morning roll and it's just got a lot of toasted pistachios and a little bit of cardamom, super delicious and it's got a ton of different textures.

Now this recipe has no frosting, no sticky substance. The only topping is this pinch of this sugar mixture, so I'm reserving four tablespoons or a quarter cup of this mixture and this I'm going to set aside and it's going to go on top of the muffins when they're baked, now the rest is mixed together. with the pistachios and then this is our filling and now the last step is to create some honey butter. I love adding honey. I'm only using two tablespoons but it adds a lot of flavour, so now I'm just melting the honey and butter together, most of it will go to the surface of the dough before we sprinkle our pistachio mixture on top.

I'm going to reserve some to also spread on top of the buns when they come out and that will give this reserved sugar mixture something to stick to my filling. Ready. I'm going to take my dough and show you how to make the buns, so I'm going to place this on my lightly floured surface. I'm going to roll it out into a fairly thin, wide slab. The important thing when rolling it out is that you want something that is as close to a rectangle as possible and that means all your muffins will be the same size so I just press it lightly and I want even coverage across the surface so now I'm ready to go to roll I'm going to start at the end closest to me and I go little by little from one end to the other and I start to form the dough thinking about forming a spiral, I tighten the roll a little and try to work from the center outwards and that's just It helps to thin it a little and then make the whole thickness bigger. regular and more, I can even hear my mom say: don't cut on the counter, my parents got scared by things like that, so you can see we have our really pretty little pistachio spirals, these are going to go in the pan with the side cut upwards.

They have to stand up again I'm going to cover them up They're going to get nice and swollen This tray is ready to use so I'm going to show you what they look like They've swollen up quite a bit They're all touching each other It looks really good, so this just goes away above between tower pistachio buns, fast food commercial

perfect

hamburger buns and our cartoon loaves of bread. It's a little overwhelming but I think this really shows the versatility of a dough of this style and the texture is something that's hard to beat, I'm just going to take out a little bit here, I have one of the pistachio muffins, very slightly sweet for For me, this is the kind of food you can eat in the morning and not feel like you need a nap right after.

Seriously, really good, obviously this is a very versatile recipe, but you're not limited to just hamburger buns or pistachio buns or a loaf, you can really use it in any number of applications and that's the great thing about trying this at

home

. about learning from these recipes, experimenting with spreading the dough and bread wings, so I hope you enjoyed the New York Times Cooking hashtag, what's up? Subscribe, do it or not, it's up to you.