Berger - Buns and burgers: handcrafted burgers from top to bottom

Buns and Burgers Handcrafted Burgers from
Top to Bottom Greg ory Berger Coral Gables Copyright 2019 Greg ory Berger Cover Design: Greg ory Berger Layout Design: Je rmaine Lau Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc. Mango is an active supporter of authors rights to free speech and artistic expression in their books. The purpose of copyright is to encourage authors to produce exceptional works that enrich our culture and our ope n society. Uploading or distributing photos, scans, or any content from this book without prior permission is theft of the authors intellectual property. Please honor the authors work as you would your own. Thank you in advance for respecting our author s rights.

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Buns and Burgers: Handcrafted Burgers from Top to Bottom ISBN: (p) 978-1-64250-116-2 (e) 978-1-6 4250-117-9 LCCN: 2019944141 BISAC: CKB009000COOKING / Courses & Dish es / Bread To Lori, the love of my life, who continually inspires me to be my better self and gives me the confidence to look life in the eye and say, Yeah, I can do this. To my son Rowan, who brings joy and happiness to our lives each day and isnt afraid of seeds on bun s anymore. Table of Contents Sometime in my high school years, back in the early 90s, my family took a summer vacation to New Orleans. This trip, which seemed like it would be an uneventful sightseeing tour, ended up being a life changing adventure. There was gumbo. There was jambalaya.

There was touffe . At one point, the gumbo was accompanied by a full marching band playing Saints Go Marching In. The flavors of this trip awoke my taste buds, which up to that point were a little bit adventurous, but barely beyond a typical Midwestern kids palate. (I had tried shrimp but it was fried. I had seen an avocado, but never tasted one, and wouldnt have been able to find the heart of an artichoke if the world depended on it). Bill Knapps chocolate cakes on birthdays and Marions Pizza were our equivalent of the French Laundry r estaurant.

Soon after that trip, I graduated high school and went to college, where I honed my chicken salad (now with grapes!) and gumbo skills. I moved back home after graduating. Thats when the next big, lifechanging thing happened: The Food Network. For real, The Food Network. Before the channel morphed into a bunch of reality shows, there were actual people showing you how to cook actual food! I spent hours watching Essence of Emeril , Too Hot Tamales , and Grillin & Chillin . Bobby Flay and Jack McDavid were roasting red peppers on a kettle grill.

Emeril Lagasse was blackening shrimp and making a rmoulade . Susan Finnegan and Mary Sue Milliken were adding mangos to a salsa. Groundbreaking in my head! I would watch a show, run to the store and buy the ingredients, and then make it that same night for my parents. Nine out of ten times, this was a grea t success. After that summer cooking so many delicious meals, I moved to Chicago. I applied to the Culinary Institute, but ultimately decided against it, choosing a day job in graphic design over the kit chen life.

Jump ahead to 2013. The previous fifteen years had been spent making a ton of great food. Id become a fairly good cook. I read cookbooks, cooking magazines, watched the shows. But in 2013, I came across a copy of Michael Pollans book Cooked . One of the sections was about making sourdough bread.

For some reason, this drew me the most. Then I immediately bought Chad Robertsons Tartine, and began a baking quest. I collected natural yeast from the air, and pretty soon was producing some very ni ce loaves. The loaves got better and better. I started entering them in the California State Fair, and started winning. I started getting offers to buy my bread, to get the recipes, to teach classes.

So this is what I did: I started helping local restaurants write recipes for bread that fit their meal schedules, I started teaching classes here and there, I started doing burger popups with my Burger-in-law , Rodney. And now, I want to teach you how to do this. Just as I learned how to cook from watching television and reading books, you can learn by reading this book, by seeking out baking shows, and by watching videos on the internet. Baking and sharing bread has been done for thousands of years, but it seems our culture has forgotten how. There are few things more rewarding than the smell of baking bread and the sight of fresh loaves coming out of the oven. Sure, itll take some practice.

Some of your buns will be misshapen. Sometimes theyll overproof, because you had to go pick up your kid or run to the store, and you got distracted. Sometimes youll forget to turn on the oven timer, and youll burn the buns, or your oven will be too hot, and youll toast the tops to a crisp. Dont worry; its just flour and a few ingredients. Start over and try again. You ll get it! Im often inspired to bake or cook because of an Instagram photo, or a recipe I see while flipping through a book.

Most of the time, when I look at a recipe, I only need to grasp the basics and then make it without referring back to the specifics. Or I see a photo and try to recreate a version of what I saw with whatever I hav e on hand. Most of the recipes in this book lend themselves to that style of cooking. They are mainly a starting off point or a suggestion. If you cant find pea sprouts, use lettuce. If you have arugula, but the recipe calls for leaf lettuce, go for it! The greens are simply to provide a nice cool crunch, and a break from all the meat and carbs.

Also, most of the cheeses in this book are interchangeable. Cheddar, Swiss, manchego, even American, can be used equivalently on just about any burger, should you like one but not another. Or, just use what you alr eady have! For the beef, try to use a little less, and get the best you can buy. Go to a butcher or grocery store that carries sustainable, grass-fed beef. You can easily make one pound of good beef stretch into fou r burgers. A lot of recipes say, Add salt and pepper to taste.

I recommend that you salt everything, and salt often. When cooking, add a little throughout the cooking process, not just at the end. This helps flavor the food from the inside, not just the outside. I keep a small bowl of kosher salt nearby, and I throw in a pinch here and there. Using pinches instead of a shaker helps ensure that you arent ove r-salting. In the baking part of this book, however, you do need to be a little more precise.

The measurements and the basic ingredients can be pretty important. You cant just sub almond milk for regular milk, or oil for butter. But the baking part is also a great place to let your creativity shine! Many people will tell you that baking is an exact science, but dont let that intimidate you. Most bakers and baking books use the metric system, digital scales, and ratios to write the recipes. If you seriously get into baking, metric is great! I use a digital scale most of the time. But I wanted this book to be as easy for you as possible, so I stuck with the tried-and-true cups and teaspoons.

All the recipes here have been tested, but sometimes I didnt precisely remember the measurements. Did I use exactly a quarter cup of sugar? Did I pack the flour into the cup, or was it spooned in? Dont worry; the recipes will work, regardless. Theyre just buns. But there are some things that I do and use that you probably should as well, in order to improve your success. Heres a list of equipment and ingredients that I use when baking an d cooking.