My wife is making a roadtrip, so I made her and daughter some brisket breakfast tortillas to eat and take with. Fried white corn tortillas, scrambled eggs with lots of cheese in them, and a slice of brisket!
Also checked her tire pressures, oil, and coolant, so I’m in good graces with her this morning!

Hey, look what was waiting for me when I got home from a trip last night!
Thanks much, Walton’s, very nice hat I will enjoy wearing! Great tasting little pack of jerky too, nice coriander/pepper flavors, with a great soft texture!
Took a picture with some buckboard bacon…

Thx again for a wonderful place to learn and share, and access all the supplies we could need!
Austin Jonathon

This is a recipe that about replicates the hamburger or hotdog buns you buy from the store: soft, correct texture, not to hard or crusty like a baguette or artisan bread. It has the proper yellowish color and richness and dinner roll tearability from an egg and more butter than most bread.

I make bread about every other day for kids lunches, as well as baguettes, brioche, sourdough, bagels, English muffins, and pretzels. I’ve tried a lot of variations for sandwich buns, so far these are the best.

You need 4" bun pans to make. I got a silicone mild shallow one making 8, half inch deep, and a metal pan making 6 that is 1" deep. Will post Amazon links later if I can figure out what this software will let me post for links.
I think for most folks would want a 5" bun for a large burger. The 4" ones are like McDonalds cheeseburger size.

I was testing amount of dough per bun on these. The deeper ones in back were 67 grams dough, the smaller buns up front were just 50g in the shallow mold. Correct amount: 67g each, up to about 80g.

Recipe:
1c milk
2T sugar
1T instant fast rise yeast
— mix above warm, let yeast activate while measure rest
1 large egg
1/4c or half stick salted butter, melted
390 g All Purpose flour, about 3 c fluffed. Not bread flour.
1t salt

1.Mix egg and butter into liquids, add half flour.
2. Beat this batter 3-5 min.
3. Add rest of flour while kneading with breadhook or spatula/ hand. Knead 5 min.
4. Add 50 g or so additional flour as needed to achieve this dough consistency:
– a wet, slack dough. Pulls away from sides of mixer bowl but stays stuck to bottom.
– too moist to knead by hand almost. Holding it 5 seconds results in stuck to fingers, you have to only let your fingers contact it for half second to keep from sticking.
– better too moist than too dry! You can add enough flour to surface to work into balls later.
5. Scrape dough from bowl, form into ball, coat in hands with butter, about 1t or so. Put back in bowl, cover bowl with plastic wrap.
6. Let rise/proof for 25min to 45 min at 80-100f, faster if warmer, to just less than doubled. Don’t overproof or it won’t rise 2nd time!
7. Punch down dough. Should total 800g or so.
8. Divide dough into 12 x 67g chunks. This works great if you buy 2 of the 6 hole 1" deep 4" diam bun pans.
Do the math for whatever your dough weighs, you need at least 65g each. You could do 10 x 80g. If you get the 8 hole silicone pan I have, then you’ll have 8 rolls of 90-100g dough. I think that would spill over mold too much, but will try and post.
9. Form dough into balls by forming an OK sign with your fingers, shove dough through hole with fingers from below, shoving excess dough up through center of ball. Smoosh flat to about the size of a Skoal or Copenhagen can lid, maybe a bit smaller.
10. Lay discs or flattened balls into bottom of greased pan if metal, just plain if silicone. Cover suuuper loosely with plastic wrap, so it won’t impede dough rising 1" above pans or more.
11. Stick pans back into proofing spot. I use my oven, run it for 1 min then off to get 100 to 115f temp.
12. Let rise for 30min to 1hr, until dough fills molds and rises up 1" or more. Pull out, put somewhere warm so they don’t fall, heat oven to 350.
13. Bake in bottom third of oven for 20-25 min. Pull out quickly 5 min before done and paint tops with melted butter. This keeps them soft and browns them. Cook until tops look golden brown OR waaay better, an instant read digital thermometer is 190 f.

Notes:

1. Dough must be pretty moist, too moist to handle without a bit of flour on the balls when forming. If drier, like something you’d knead on a board, it will be like a french roll instead of soft burger bun.
2. If you want less dough so it properly fits your pans, like this is a wee bit much for mine, reduce flour 60 g and milk by 1 oz. Higher ratios of egg and butter will be fine.
3. Weigh flour! If you’re experienced at proper dough consistency you could volume measure and work up to it… but it always takes longer so you don’t overshoot the flour. Weighed ingredients for baking is the only way to go.
4. You NEED the bun pans to achieve proper bun height. If just flat on a tray, dough is too slack to stand up and will spread out. If you make dough firmer, you won’t get the soft burger bun texture, you’ll get a subway sandwich roll texture.
5. Don’t overcook, they get tougher.
6. You can also cook at 375 f for 18-20 min. This might give softer bun depending on it’s size.
7. They sell a 5" bun tray, that is a large burger bun. Then you need 8x 100g buns for larger bun.
8. IMPORTANT – for softer bun with better even brown, place a tray of boiling water below buns during cook! I just have a tray in there, microwave boil 2c and dump it in after loading bun pans. Acts like a steam injection oven.

You can see 50g dough didnt quite fill the shallow molds of 4" silicone, but 67g did great in deeper molds.

These 50g buns are good for small thinner sandwich buns, my kids don’t like too much bread. But dough didnt expand to mold wall, so they lack proper height.

Canadian bacon ham, brown sugar clove allspice cure

21st Anniversary. Wife said she would rather eat my cooking at home, so I cancelled the steakhouse and got cooking!

Tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, avocado in balsamic vinegar and olive oil

Scallops, seared with a brown butter dill gewurtztraminer deglaze reduction.
With my own cold smoked salmon.

NY Strip steak, with grilled zucchini and asparagus, sauteed green beans, and rosemary roasted red potatoes. With bernaise sauce. Steak was sous vide to 128 then hickory smoked at 150 then reverse seared.

All served with a cabernet sauvignon. I even remembered to get flowers and card!

Double bacon sandwich on homemade sourdough brioche. Belly bacon, Canadian bacon.

Also, my Canadian bacon and capacolla ham and bread , along with store bought pepperoni, sandwich.

Tons of folks have been making Philly cheese steak sausages. I decided to try making a Philly cheese steak burger.
70% ground beef, 30% venison
Sauteed onions and green peppers added to burger. Cheese blend added to burger, a lot.

Made big buns, they proofed larger than I thought! Next time will make 9 buns instead of 6. These are a potato and egg bread bun.
!
20220803_145940.jpg

Let me start by saying that this is a recipe originally posted by diggingdogfarm many years ago, so he gets proper attribution right up front.

I wanted to make the American Classic Wisconsin style bratwurst, epitomized by the Johnsonville brat we all have tried and see in every supermarket. A search here at Walton’s for brat recipes gave some fantastic info on how to make them, including a new video by Jonathon 4 days ago that is an excellent all in one tutorial.

However, 99% of all posts and threads discussed using premade spice mixes available from Walton’s. I am sure these are fantastic, but as a cook I always want to know exactly what spices are in a flavor profile, so I can tweak them to give the exact perfect result I want. This isn’t possible with a premixed spice, though those absolutely do save time and give an outstanding result on attempt #1 for thise not interested in developing their own recipes.

I started with Stanley Marianski as a source, he has a “German Bratwurst” and a Milk and Egg Brat. I can attest both these are authentic, having lived in Germany and eaten a lot of brats in Duesseldorf, Koln, Franfurt, Kaiserslautern, and Ulm/Munich (cities I was stationed in flying for USAF). However, these are not WISCONSIN style–the German one has caraway, and the milk egg one is the whitish fine grind mace/cardamom/ginger/lemon-zest one. I love both, but needed more current and local recipes.

I spent about 10 hrs reading every thread and post I could find on various for ums and YouTube. 2guysandaCooler, SmokingMeatForum, DuncanHenry, lpoli, meatsandsausages dot com (Marianski’s recipe site), wedlinydomowe dot pl the giant Polish sausage community, etc.

I copied down every recipe I found. I compiled all brat recipes into a spreadsheet, with all ingredients normalized and converted to 1kg meat block. That is, I converted all ingredient T and tsp into grams, then expressed them as a % of meat block whether 5lb, 25lb, 1kg, etc. I’ve weighed all the spices per tsp 4 times and averaged, using 3 different teaspoon measures, but of course difference spice grinds could give 20 to 40% off.

All this allows me to look at 20 recipes at once and see EXACTLY where spices vary and by how much. It really lets you see the critical flavor components and their acceptable ranges, when you have 20 recipes that all got rave reviews when tested.

In the end, 30 or so experienced sausage makers who made these recipes all seemed to agree on one profile. The exact same recipe, when converted, was seen in 10 threads or so, from multiple sources.

This isn’t my recipe. I can say that this recipe matches the one given by diggingdogfarm on various forums, as well as numerous other posters over the years after he first posted it.
All ingredients, as accurate as anyone can measure.

Just in case other folks are looking for good Wisconsin or Johnsonville clone brat recipes, like I am, every person of about 30 makers has said it is spot on perfect for Johnsonville or Wisconsin
Style. There is a touch of sweetness, nutmeg and ginger do the heavy lifting in this style. Having seen this recipe show up numerous times now as folk’s Best Recommended, I would say it is a good one to use.

I stuffed them into 21 mm fresh collagen casings, the super delicate ones you use for breakfast links.  Mostly because I had a partial stick that was just the right length for 5 or 6 lbs.  I made 2kg meat, then added about 13% water to stuff thru 13mm tube, giving 2.25kg or about 5 lbs.

Would have used hog casings, but this was sausage #3 of the night (3 lb Taylor Pork Roll, 9lb Jimmy Dean clone breakfast sausage, and 5 lbs of this brat).  So I needed to just grab an easy casing and finish, so I didn’t keep my kids awake while cleaning

I steamed these with a few T of water then let them brown. The beer is Paulaner Hefe Weizen.

Recipe from diggingdogfarm “old family recipe”:
1000g fatty pork butt
1.7% salt, 17g
0.5% sugar, 5.3g
0.25% black pepper fresh ground, 2.5g
0.22% nutmeg, fresh, 2.2g
0.05% coriander toasted ground, 0.5g
0.035% celery seed, 0.35g
0.005% marjoram, 0.05g
0.14% ginger ground, 1.4g
No binder
10% water, 100 ml or 100g

The marjoram amount seemed pointless, about 1/16t, so I bumped it up to 0.5 g. Marjoram is the primary flavor of Polish sausage, with garlic.

I like giving recipes in grams per kg meat block, or expressed as % of meat block, so anyone can just multiply for their meat amount. Teaspoons and Tablespoons are woefully inaccurate, especially considering the small spice amounts we are using, but the weight in grams is always exact. However… for those who are wedded to lbs and teaspoons, here is a picture of the 5lb recipe and my conversions:

Sliced up a bunch of buckboard bacon I made today. Just fried some up, excellent!
These are just some smaller pieces from the ends.

Reuben with my 1st pastrami for dinner! Everyone loved it.

Denny O I’m glad gus4416 asked, because I was googling sizzlers to see what the heck that was…

gus4416 thx gus!

Found the tumbler, looks nice!

AndrewPachon said in What did everyone cook today?:

Dave in AZ any photos of those bfast burritos???

No, but they were the same as the spam soft tacos except with eggs and sour cream

wagsdmb1
Hey, just ran across this post from a guy whose knowledge I really respect, indaswamp. This is from Smokingmeatforums.com, another meat community. Someone had a sopressata mold question, his reply had application to your situation I think. This guy makes 40 salami types a year I bet, dry cured hams, etc, and is very scientific… but he also tries to replicate old school methods, then just safeguards against risk with some science. So I think you’d love his posts if you go there and read. Here it is:

Bad molds really start growing rapidly when humidity rises above 85%. I recommend to try and never let the humidity rise above about 83% to prevent this problem. If you are not going to use a surface mold culture, then it is best to dry the salami at a lower temp. and a lower humidity. Below 50F being optimum, and 70-75% humidity. IF you go down to 40-45F, then lower the humidity to 68-72%RH.

Basscat
I’m gonna vote NO, but then I’m gonna waffle and add, fajitas often have some vinegar and lime juice in their seasoning, rest is close to taco. Soo… if you like fajitas flavor more than taco, I’d add the ECA!

wagsdmb1
Thx for you gracious reply, and as you can tell… I sure don’t mind answering a question I like cooking and this meat charcuterie about as much as anything, so reading folk’s great cooking posts here, and answering a question if I think I can add something, is an enjoyment for me.

Based on your added input, I’d bet odd weather was the culprit if all the rest has stayed the same. You didn’t mention any off smells or salami going bad, just not dried thru evenly, so that puts it pretty squarely on initial drying too fast.

John Belvedere above is a great resource, and if you search his posts you can get some good info and pics too!

Also, if you click here, this link will take you to the Youtube channel 2guysAndACooler. He has a ton of videos on salami making, even an old school few with no testing or drying chamber like you do. I think you’d love his 10 min videos and he is the most knowledgeable salami maker on youtube I’d say.
https://youtube.com/@2guysandacooler

Homemade tortillas and my jalapeno SPAM soft tacos

AndrewPachon dang those stuffed shells and raspberries look great!

AndrewPachon thx Andrew. We did breakfast burritos!