Buns for my Burgers

As a vegetarian, I am always looking for that perfect veggie burger. Preferably, it has a crisp crust with a moist center, is loaded with beans and vegetables, is slightly spicy, and should be good enough to eat plain. The other day I made some delicious sweet potato-black bean burgers. While I certainly could have eaten these straight up, I was hankering for a good bun to accompany them. Unfortunately, good buns are few and far between these days. The supermarket yielded no good choices. Most of the options there were plain, white, pasty, and loaded with high fructose corn syrup. But, rather than being discouraged, I was challenged and intrigued to make my own buns for my own burgers.

A Lesson on Steaming

I’ve learned that it is very dry at this altitude. My hands are constantly chapped, the cuticles catching on everything I touch and pulling painfully. I guzzle down water, glass after glass. I apply chapstick in copious amounts. But, in addition, I’ve also discovered this with my last loaf of bread. I stuck the loaf in the oven, poured probably a half-cup of water into a pan at the bottom of the oven, and then let the yeast do their magic. I came back after 15 minutes, expecting to see a blossomed loaf, the result of the fervent activity of the yeast before their hot and steamy death, but instead saw a pitifully flat-looking loaf that had already developed a stiff crust. I had thrown this recipe together as a whimsical experiment, so I figured that this recipe was just a failure and this loaf wasn’t going to be an all-star. I went off to do other things for the remainder of the bake time and when I came back I found a loaf with a protruding, lobate anomaly. It looked almost like a stuck-out tongue, the loaf mocking me for some oversight or misstep.

High Altitude Baking

After a long hiatus, I return. Finishing up the school year, attending graduations of siblings, and getting ready for my summer job consumed much of my time. But now I am settled down and returning to my usual patterns, but in a very different place. I’ve left the east coast for the high mountains of Colorado and will be here all summer. So this entry is dedicated to my new surroundings and how they will influence my baking. All of my bread this summer will be baked at close to 9,000 feet elevation and in a fairly arid, montane climate. After some reading, here is what I have found.