Very few things can take Tom and me away from our dining room table at dinnertime. Superbowl is one of them. Especially with the Giants playing! So the big question for last Sunday became “What can we eat on plates on our laps on the couch in front of the television?” And the answer became: Hamburgers.
Now, a good hamburger deserves a good roll, but commercial hamburger buns are pretty awful – giant puffy marshmallows with an artificial suntan pretending to be a crust. Upscale groceries’ bakery departments offer many kinds of fancy rolls that, enfolding a juicy burger, will give your palate and teeth something more to consider. But I thought it’d be a good day to fire up the oven and make my own.
The recipe I use is for mini picnic rolls, from the King Arthur flour people. I merely shape the dough into 8 good-sized rolls instead of 24 tiny ones. I like the recipe because it’s got a little cornmeal in it, a little sugar, and a little butter, making for a nice flavor and texture. (The recipe also wants a smidge of potato flour or dried potato flakes, but since my pantry doesn’t run to those, I just skip that.)
The rolls came out well, though a little larger than ideal and a little fragile (crumbs on the lap, the sofa, and the living room floor during the exciting moments of the game). This was probably because I used half again as much yeast as the recipe called for. I thought I ought to because my regular breads haven’t been rising as much as they should lately. I buy instant yeast by the pound and keep it in the freezer. I just noticed that the current package’s “best if used by” date is March 2011, so I’m pushing the envelope, even with the preservative capability of the freezing. Guess I’d better buy fresh yeast.
Anyway, we had a comforting coffee-table picnic (the urban equivalent of the tailgate party) while we struggled along with the Giants toward their glorious cliff-hanger victory. To accompany the hamburgers we’d made baked beans, potato salad, and green salad, and set out homemade bread-and-butter pickles and Tom’s famously spicy doctored ketchup. And in defiance of all those beer commercials on the tube, we drank Ridge Zinfandel and San Pellegrino.
(You can see a bit of the football game reflected in the glass at the back of the table.)
If you’re interested in these rolls, you can find the recipe on the King Arthur website.
And the TV remote control is the perfect table accessory. What a game and what a birthday for Tom!
I had BBQ ribs which Marge ate in the dining room, while I dined in the kitchen in front of the TV.
You are so right about commercial hamburger rolls — a disgrace!