Thursday, January 8, 2009

Tomato Molasses Hamburger buns...perfect for BBQ sandwiches.


Tomato adds such a cool color to bread dough. Don't you think so? These are my cute buns. Um... That came out wrong. These are my HAMBURGER BUNS. Manly buns. Not cute. Manly.

Today we had them for dinner with some vegetarian BBQ filling made with mushrooms and caramelized onion...and BBQ sauce stuff. Pretty basic.

I used my basic bread recipe but replaced one of the cups of water with tomato sauce, and the 2 T of honey with 3 T dark molasses. That's it. When the dough was ready for the final proof, I formed into 8 large balls. Coated a bakers stone with cornmeal, and put the buns on the stone. They raised just over an hour and then I brushed them with water and sprinkled the tops with more cornmeal. They had such a nice crunch to them. Baked at 400 degrees 25-30 minutes. When still hot I cut them and filled them with the BBQ filling.

Here's the "before picture"...


I decided to go a little over the carrot top and make a freaky fun center holder for the carrot sticks. It's just a bell pepper cut in thirds, this is the middle section. How cool is that? My boys went crazy about it...which always makes me smile. BIG.

Look at these buns all baked now and loaded up with filling. Want to know a secret? The tomato and molasses go perfect with BBQ. I don't think I can ever go back to plain buns again. No matter how cute they are.



Wow.


For the record, we are real people too. Ketchup. Plastic punch jug. Gallon of milk on the table.

So, don't think I am Martha Stewart. She's such a smarty pants. I don't have her entire creative staff either. Or a maid. Or several million in the bank. Just me and the boys.


Here's Face, eating the beets . He was so happy!!



What more can I say? It was a sweet dinner. Life is good.

Here's to living each day as if it was your last, and turning off the TV for dinner.

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