Kaiser Rolls

Tonight's menu includes grilled chicken sandwiches done in the style of Guy Fieri's Margarita Chicken Sandwich.  I made a few changes and will report them and the results later on, but it calls for kaiser rolls, so I figured I would try and make them.

My wife found a wonderful website called The Fresh Loaf, and upon googling for kaiser roll recipe, it pulled up a recipe from the site, so I figured that would be a good start.  The initial list of ingredients looked do-able, though I have no idea what "malt powder" is, and I wasn't feeling particularly motivated to find out, so I decided to do the recipe without it.  I made one batch last night to see what would happen and today my wife made a batch with a few suggestions from my mistakes.  We found out a couple of things:

The basic recipe works fine.  Here are my modifications:

I prefer to start the yeast with the water, sugar and yeast before I add things like salt and oil.  Somewhere I heard those items inhibit the yeast's growth, so I let I start the yeast to make sure it's alive and happy.

Like I said, I left out the "malt powder".

I had no poppy or sesame seeds, so I just did extra flour on the outside.  This turned out to be an important step.  You need to let the formed roll rise for about an hour and if you don't supply the seemingly superfluous flour, alliteration aside, the rolls will collapse if they stick and you try and move them to the stone.

I had to bake in two halves as my stone isn't large enough.  The first half of the first batch, I used 450° in the oven and set the time for 22 minutes.  At 20 minutes they came out pretty dark, but the the decorative folds turned out very nice.

The second half of the first batch, I used 450° and did 18 minutes.  They had better color, but because of the extra rise time, the decoration was much more muted.

The second batch was put together by my wife while I was at work.  I told her to change the temperature to 425°, and while I had noticed the flour did I nice job of keeping the the risen roll from sticking and subsequently deflating, I didn't mention the utilitarian purpose of the flour on top.  She didn't care for the excess flour so she didn't use a whole lot and the rolls ended up sticking and deflating...  Sad face.

As far as the decoration goes, it got about 2 hours of rising in roll form so the decoration wasn't that pronounced, but I'm sure they'll taste fine.  They were baked at 425° for 15 minutes which produced a much lighter brown on the roll, though I think I may go back to the 450° and use 15 minutes.  The lower heat didn't make as intense of a crust.

So here goes my recipe:

Combine the following and let rest for 10 min:
1.5 tsp yeast
1 tbs sugar
1.25 cup water tepid water

Once the yeast is happy whisk in the following:
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 egg white (save the yolk to fry up and put on the finished roll with some butter and a slice of cheese)
1 tbs vegetable oil

Add flour until it's right.  In my French Bread recipe I explain what that means.

Knead until it is mixed, let it rise in an oven with the light on for an hour.

Knead for a few minutes and rise for an hour again.  Maybe it develops flavor?  I don't know.

Let it rise for another hour.

Take a look at the Kaiser Roll recipe from fresh loaf for how to form the roll.

Place the formed roll on a heavily floured (or poppy/sesame seeded) surface to rise for an hour.

40 minutes in to the rise, preheat the oven to 450°F with the stone on the middle rack and a cast iron pan on the bottom rack.

Once everything is hot, transfer the rolls to the stone and then pour a cup of water into the cast iron pan to make some steam to help develop the crust.  Leave it in there for 15 minutes and then assess how the crust looks.  It would also be worth turning the remaining rolls over so the decoration doesn't get flattened.

Here is a photo of the different batches in the order in which I made them so you can see what I mean about browning and decoration.


Make it so number one.  Engage.