Frozen dinner

I've been trying to work more on clearing food out of the freezers for our dinners, rather than buying new food, which is sort of presenting me with a fun challenge at times. But it's also going to be nice to open up more of that space for when big chunks of meat go on BOGO sales at the store, etc. This week I decided to combine some hamburger bun dough from (don't laugh!) February 2007 (so almost two years old now!) and some shredded pork from the crockpot, which was only a few months old. I have to say I love our FoodSaver - it really does an amazing job at keeping foods super fresh (like the 2 1/2 yr old chocolate zucchini bread topped with coarse sugar that everyone at work LOVED earlier this week!).

I've found what works really well for thawing bread dough in a hurry is to put the dough, bag and all, in a big mixing bowl of hot water. Replace the cooled off water with more hot water every so often, and before long the dough has both thawed AND been coerced into rising again - the bag it's in makes for a nice, warm, humid environment, and the water's never stays hot long enough to actually COOK the bread.

Joe over at Culinary in the Desert turned many of his readers on to The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion best burger buns a couple years back - so much so that I ended out buying the book! These really are great buns! Here's the four buns I was able to make from the blob of dough, once it had thawed and started to rise a bit.


You can see I didn't have them in PERFECT bun shapes, but there were little tiny bits of still-chilly/firm dough and I was trying to be careful not to overwork the dough and set back any rising that had already started.


Once baked they turned out a little mottled in color - not a perfect consistent browning across the top, but that didn't matter one bit. Certainly didn't affect the flavor! I wonder if it was because the dough had been frozen? We hadn't had these buns in quite awhile, and were pleasantly reminded how good they were!


I wish I would've gotten pictures of them filled with the reheated shredded pork and drizzled with barbecue sauce, but by that time we were chomping at the bit to eat these little guys! Yum!

Oh! And I don't remember if I mentioned one of my Christmas gifts from my parents was a
1/4 sheet pan from Chicago Metallic (note: they list is as the "small" size commercial jelly roll pan - same thing). I'd asked for this, thinking it might come in handier for small projects, rather than have out the larger 1/2 sheet pan (which don't fit in our construction-grade dishwasher very well). I LOVED the little quarter sheet pan SO much that I've already treated myself to a second one PLUS a Silpat fit to the size of a 1/4 sheet pan. What a great combination for baking small amounts of stuff!!