Hot Dog Rolls, Rude Burgers and Mothers' Day

Today I bring you hot dogs. Or, more precisely, bread rolls for hot dogs. The sausage bit is conspicuously absent because we ate them. All. Veryfast. Which is a testimony both to their deliciousness and to my hectic teatime regime.

When I made these, last night, it was worse than usual because my daughter had a friend round and the pressure was on to chop salad and serve food before the play-date was over.

Also, my frankfurters had frozen together in a big lump and wouldn't quite fit in the pan. Oh the stress(!)

So, when I finally served dinner, the whole glorious feast was devoured before I reached for the camera. (Hopefully you're now imagining mouthwatering salads, freshly baked rolls and elegantly arranged hot-dog sausages. They were vegetarian ones, if you need to know, but you can imagine them like regular ones because they looked just the same. Anyway, that's exactly how it was, all beautiful and appetising and... oh, who am I kidding? Ketchup was involved.)

But see? I saved you some ;o)

A tad burnt, if I'm being critical, but a great texture and flavour. They sliced well and held together even when loaded with sausage, salad and ketchup.

I used this hot dog roll recipe from the Fabulous Baker Brothers, with a tweak or two of my own (I didn't have any lard, for example).

My actual ingredients were:

500g/17 oz/3⅓ cups strong white flour
200ml/7 fl oz/¾ cup milk (non-dairy would be fine)
100ml/3 fl oz/½ cup water
25g/1 oz sourdough starter (you can omit this if you don't have any)
25g/1 oz butter (which I melted) (or you could use vegetable oil)
25g/1 oz sugar (I used white sugar)
1 tsp instant dried yeast
2 tsp salt
Plus egg or milk (non-dairy would be fine) for the glaze.

Follow the Master Method for making bread (which is basically, mix all the ingredients together and knead them until you have a smooth dough. Leave this to ferment for about 45 minutes then shape.)

When you get to the shaping part, in the master method, you can forget about loaf pans and, instead, divide your dough into 10 pieces. Roll each one into a sausage shape long enough to accommodate your hot-dogs and place them all on a baking tray. Brush them with beaten egg and leave them to prove.

After about an hour, or when your dough passes the prod test, re-glaze the rolls with more beaten egg and place them in a hot oven, say 230^oC/450F. Cook them for about 15 minutes or until they are nicely browned. I overdid it a bit on the 'nicely browned' front but I did manage to offer my children freshly prepared fruit and veg with their meal, so surely that counts as a mitigating circumstance?

The dough was slightly sweet with a brioche-like quality. It would make excellent rolls for burgers too, the sweetness providing an excellent compliment to the meaty filling and the dough robust enough to hold its own in a sandwich situation.

Speaking of burgers...

I have this little boy who loves tools and making things. Today we made domino rallies.

"Can I knock it down yet?"
"Nope, I'm just adding some more..."
"Oops!"
"Shall I try again?"

We decided that we could have the domino rally positioned so that it would cause something else to happen, which would, in turn, trigger some other event (we wanted to make it fire a catapult, actually) as in the famous cartoons depicting weird and wonderfully convoluted ways of making simple things happen. I'm reliably informed* that these are called 'Rude Burger Machines'. I'll let you know if we make any rude burgers.
*by my four year old. He's heard of Rube Goldberg and come to his own conclusions.

And Mothers' Day.

Let it just be said that it is, indeed, the thought that counts.

For various reasons, I was home alone with my brood on Sunday. My middle daughter, who is five, had been shopping with daddy to buy some provisions so that she could make my lunch. Naturally, I was excited (and a little apprehensive) to be ushered out of the dining room (after I had first cleared the table) to wait for my 'surprise'.

I could hear her busying about, getting everything ready. From what my informant had told me, I knew that the plan was to have ham sandwiches, party-ring biscuits, bread sticks, hummus, strawberries, blueberries, crisps... I could hear the clattering of china as she no doubt arranged things in bowls and set out plates. She was probably opening the crisps and arranging the biscuits, I thought.

Imagine my excitement as I was, at last, ushered through to the dining room. I had to keep my eyes closed and be guided to my seat. There I was, sitting in front of the first meal ever prepared for me by my children.

Ta dah!!

Yeah. Definitely the thought that counts.

More Recipes Here

Click here to download your guide to Fresh Bread In 20 Minutes.

And grab a copy of The Recipes here (my ebook, FULL of delicious bread recipes). What's your favourite type of bread?