Conventional wisdom — among burger bloggers at least — is that it’s not worth it to make your own buns. This matches my experience: chalky, crumbly, too chewy, too rich, the list of sins goes on and on. So many broken promises, so many tears.

These bitter bun experiences have taught me better than to take some blogger’s promises about the homemade bun that’s finally — really! — worth it, and so I might have skipped over my good friend Brett’s (of Trout Caviar) Bun recipe with that same cynicism if I hadn’t tried them before, and loved them. It was a hot summer afternoon picnic on Brett’s rolling Wisconsin property, Bide-a-Wee, and we were camped under a farmers market tent, trying to stay in the shade. My bun was full of wood smoked pulled pork, and while the pork was as delicious as pork usually is, the bun stole the show for me. Knowing Brett the buns would have to be homemade — I don’t think he’s ever served me bread he hadn’t baked himself — but I asked nonetheless if he had made the buns, incredulous. He had. I’m too discreet to ask a baker for his recipes, and with Brett’s Real Bread no longer for sale at the farmers market, I figured my only chances to savor these buns would be on the odd invitation out to Bide-a-Wee.

And then Brett asked the world check out his buns.

After that lunch in Wisconsin I didn’t need any more convincing to try the recipe. I followed it as Brett printed, although I may not have kneaded it quite as long as I should have because the dough was quite sticky and difficult for me to work with. In any case, I was planning an overnight fermentation in the fridge, which can cover over a lot of under-kneading sins. The buns came out of the oven the next day and were as good as I remembered.

What makes these buns so special? It’s the texture. They hit a perfect middle road: chewy enough to feel like something and absorb juices without disintegrating, yet light enough not to distract from the main event, located between them. These buns are suitable for a thick and juicy steakhouse burger but won’t diminish a diner-style slider, either. They even work with my favorite veggie burgers which, while delicious, are infamous for squishing out the back-side of lesser buns.

If inferior buns — from the store or your oven — have left you jaded and cynical, I am writing this post to tell you there is hope. There is truth. There is Le Bun.

My taste in pizza runs strongly to the Neapolitan, and the pizza I make most often at home has a very thin, crisp crust. But I am by no means some kind of Neapolitan absolutist: I keep an open mind about the many styles of pizza in the world. Sometimes I even make a different style at home — like last night, when I got a craving for doughy, pillowy-crusted pizza. Without any dough prepped, I needed a crust that could be assembled and baked within a couple of hours. Focaccia is perfect for this — its flavor might be a little better with an overnight fermentation, but in a pinch it is a great bread to throw together.

As a baker, I happen to think pizza is always mostly about the crust, but with an assertive bread like focaccia as its base this pizza called for the simplest of toppings: some tomatoes, dried oregano, and a sprinkling of mozzarella cheese.

Dough:

• 20 oz all purpose flour
• ½ oz salt (~1 Tbsp)
• ¼ oz instant yeast (~2 tsp)
• .58 oz powdered milk
• .34 oz sugar (~1 Tbsp)
• 1.25 oz olive oil (~5 Tbsp)
• 16 oz water

The first thing to notice about this dough is that its hydration level is 80%: that’s way to wet to knead by hand. You could use the stretch and fold method, but it will greatly increase mixing time and should really involve an overnight rest. If you have a machine at your disposal, this is the time to use it: I combined all the ingredients in the bowl of my stand mixer and mixed — with the paddle to combine then with the dough hook — for about 9 minutes. But this batch was too small for my mixer to handle: the hook was missing a lot of the dough. The next time I make focaccia, I’ll use the food processor. Combine all ingredients in the food processor’s bowl using the steel blade and process until the dough comes together and is smooth, about two minutes.

Allow the dough to rest in an oiled medium mixing bowl for an hour until approximately doubled.

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Line a half-sheet pan with parchment and spread two or three tablespoons of olive oil evenly over the parchment. Pour out dough onto lined pan, top with another couple tablespoons of olive oil, then use your fingertips to spread the dough to fit the pan. It probably won’t fully cover the corners, but get as close as you can. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and allow to rest another hour, until the dough looks bubbly and full.

Toppings:

• 1 (14 oz) can diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen’s fire-roasted variety and heartily recommend them)
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 4 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded

After dough has risen the second time (in the pan), spread the tomatoes evenly over it and sprinkle with oregano. Distribute the cheese evenly over top. Bake 18-20 minutes, until crust is golden and cheese has started to brown in spots.

Since I don’t have to work on the weekend I avoid that nagging pressure to interact with the other humans by baking bread. The rhythm of bread baking is such that it is both leisurely and consuming.

The first thing I did in the morning was cover 10 grain hot cereal mix with boiling water as the starter for the multigrain bread that was featured in Cook’s Illustrated a year or two ago. This is my go-to basic bread to have around the house, great for toast and sandwiches. The crumb is not so dense as a lot of multigrain breads thanks to copious amounts of white flour and instant yeast makes for a predictable rising schedule. The flavor is earthy, as multigrained breads should be, and tinged with honey. This recipe is simple, not very time consuming and reliably produces a pretty pair of loaves.

With that out of the way, I went to the store to get more flour (3 lbs was not going to cut it). I had refreshed my sourdough starter the day before and left it out all morning to bubble and grow. I needed to make pitas for dinner and I also wanted to make a couple of european-style breads. I like a loose crumb so I was aiming for about 66% hydration, and I wanted to use a pound of my starter, mostly to facilitate storing the rest of it in the fridge. I was figuring I wanted about 3# of final dough for my european breads and at least 2# to be able to make 8 four ounce pitas. Math time!

A pound of starter was 8oz water and 8oz flour. I wanted to end up with about 80 oz of dough and I was going to have 2/3 as much water as flour (and I like round numbers that my scale can handle) so I planned to add 40 oz of flour. That gave me 48 oz of flour total, 66% of which is 31.68, which I rounded to a nice even 32 (which meant I would add 24 additional ounces).

With my formula figured out, I proceeded to mix and knead the dough, adding a good amount of salt. With wild yeast rising times are pretty unpredictable, and salt inhibits rising, so I had no idea when the dough was going to double in size. I set out to work on some other things.

Around 5 p.m. I got tired of waiting and decided to weigh and shape my dough. I recently discovered that weighing individual dough pieces so they are the same really helps with the uniformity of the final product (durh) so I got out my scale. 1.5# of dough went to a boule which I left to proof in a heavily oiled and floured glass bowl. Three .5# pieces got rolled into baguettes and placed on my couche to grow. The remaining 8 4 oz pieces (plus a small leftover piece) I shaped into small boules to rest for pitas.

Mostly because we were hungry I rolled out the pitas within an hour of shaping the dough even though they had not grown much at all. Apparently, that is not very important with pitas. Here they are in the oven:

That is what we like to call pocket-city. Below you’ll see them in a nice little stack (wrapped in a towel to keep them warm and chewy):

After dinner I decided it did not make much sense to wait up till all hours for the rest of my breads to proof in the meantime wasting all that heat in the stone in my oven, so the baguettes were transferred to a floured peel, scored and baked. For the record, they were underproofed, but I think they turned out fine.

Lastly, the boule. I apparently did not flour my bowl enough because this bread stuck to the sides and did not want to land on the peel. When it finally did, it was horribly deformed. It is pretty annoying to spend this much time on a piece of bread only to have some stupid mistake destroy everything you worked and fought for; much can be learned about life from bread baking, evidently. I made a feeble attempt at scoring this bread artfully to make the mistakes look intentional and then slid it onto the stone. I was surprised by a good amount of oven spring, but upon eating the bread the next day found dense areas that suggested underproofing. Great crumb for the most part though thanks to the relatively high hydration!

And so passed another Saturday.