Here is a white bread dough made with a poolish that is not only delicious but can be used for dinner rolls, hamburger buns, hot dog buns and sandwich bread. The only differences being shaping the dough, proofing and bake time. I'm going to make dinner rolls. After, I'll give the differences for each bread and maybe throw a little of that "bread math" out there for those interested in making different sized batches. Suppose you want 30 rolls or 5 loaves of bread or you only have 750 g of flour and you want to use it up, you will easily be able to adjust your ingredients to meet the task without waste.
Let's have a look at our ingredients. I'll provide the volumes as well but still recommend that you weigh your ingredients.
Poolish
%
Strong wheat fl 319 g (2 1/2 c) 60
Instant yeast 6 g (2 tsp) 1.1
Whole milk 340 g (1 1/4 c) 64
Final dough
%
Strong wheat fl 213 g (1 2/3 cup) 40
salt 11 g (1 1/2 tsp) 2
sugar 42.5 g (3 tbsp) 8
1 Lge egg yolk 18 g? 3.5
Unsalted butter 57 g (1/4 cup) 10.7
Making the Poolish
Whisk the yeast and flour together thoroughly in your stand mixer bowl. Pour in the warm milk and mix until the flour is saturated. I reference a wonderful tool for mixing the poolish in Sourdough Starter. I highly recommend you invest in this tool if you don't already own one. It makes mixing so much easier than a whisk or spoon. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and let stand in a less drafty area of the kitchen for 45 min to and hour. It will grow noticeably and become foamy.
The Final Dough
Pour the flour, salt and sugar over the poolish. Then add the egg and butter. Use the dough hook attachment and knead on medium speed until the dough becomes soft and elastic. This may take between 8 to 12 minutes depending on your mixer. When ready, the dough should clear the sides of the bowl but still stick to the bottom slightly.
It should pass the "window pane test' of being able to hold a membrane without tearing while gently stretched. I like to take the dough out and knead it a little with my fingers to be sure it's not too sticky or dry and in need of either a little water or flour. If so, I work this in by hand as well. put your finished dough in a lidded container that has been sprayed with oil. Roll the dough around until covered with the oil and leave to rise for about 2 hours.
Shaping, Proofing, Baking
Line one large or two small baking trays with parchment paper. Near the trays prepare your counter by lightly dusting it with flour. I use a silicon baking mat to shape my dough as my counter is tile and therefore not flat. I also find the mat holds flour better than the non-porous surface of a counter top. Turn your dough out on the floured surface.
Cut the dough into 18 equal size pieces about 60 g each. You can weigh your dough and divide by eighteen for a more precise weight that will ensure your rolls are all the same size. Shape each piece into rounds. This is best achieved by pushing your thumb up the middle and with your other hand stretch the dough slightly from the top down and tucking the dough under and into the hole made by your thumb. Then cup the ball roll it in a tiny circular pattern keeping the seam at the bottom. When it is nicely rounded place it seam down on the tray. Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces.
Arrange your rolls seam down with one in the middle and seven around the outside leaving only about a centimetre between the pieces. Repeat this for the remaining pieces. This will make your final product visually appealing and the rolls will tear easily apart from each other. If using a single large pan, ensure your two patterns are several inches apart. Cover with spray oil and cling wrap and let stand for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 *F. At this point your can brush an egg wash on the buns (1 egg plus a tsp of water whisked) if you wish. I prefer not. I like the look of a naturally browned bread. Unless there is something particular about the bread, I don't generally use egg wash. Bake approximately 15 minutes. Cool on a rack 20 minutes before serving.
Notes
Breads
For Hamburger buns simply divide your final dough into 12 equal pieces. After making rounds, flatten the bun a little to the desired bun shape. Place your buns in two rectangles each with two rows of three. Otherwise, the steps, are the same.
For hot dog buns divide your final dough into 12 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a torpedo shape. Then square off the ends by push both sides gently like an accordion. You want your buns to be about 7 to 8 inches long. Use the same tray placement as hamburger buns. Otherwise, the steps, are the same.
For sandwich bread oil two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch bread pans. Divide dough in two equal parts. Shape into loaves by flattening to a square length of the bread pan. Starting from one side begin to roll the dough. With each half turn, pinch the roll where the unrolled dough meets the rolled dough and pinch the final seam. Place them seam down in the pans. Let rise in the pans. The baking time for loaves is 35 to 45 minutes.
Bread Math
I choose this recipe to raise this topic because the need for each of the end products varies from household to household. What's a family of five going to do with two small loaves of bread, right? The question is how many loaves do they need until they make bread again? Maybe they want five or seven. Let's use the example I gave at the outset of wanting to use up what's left of your flour. Let's say it's 800 grams.
Don't be afraid, this is pretty easy stuff. You may have noticed in the ingredients there was another column titled %. You may have also been curious and added them up and thought, "this does not equal 100". That's because everything in Bread Math revolves around the total flour used in the recipe. Now look again at the percentages of the flour used. 60% in the poolish and 40% in the final dough. That's 100% of the flour in the recipe, 532 g! Isn't this exciting?
Each of the other ingredients is a percentage of 532 g. Let's test that. Milk is 64% of the total flour weight. 532 g x 64% = 340.48 g. So using our example of 800 g of flour we just do the math (on your mobile phone calculator of course). Milk will be 800 g x 64% = 512 g and so on through all the ingredients.
Going back to our family of five that goes through seven loaves of bread a week, let's use Bread Math to adjust their recipe. If 532 g of flour makes two loaves, how much makes seven? The equation requires your to know how much flour is in one loaf. This recipe is easy because it makes two loaves, just divide in half. That would be 266 g per loaf times seven or 1862 g of flour. Your milk would therefore be 1862 g x 64% = 1191 g of whole milk.
That wasn't so hard, right? Imagine trying to do this with a recipe that has cups and every fraction of tsp, tbsp, oz, etc. If it's all grams, it's easy as pie.
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