Burgers & Buns on the Grill

Cheeseburgers are amazing.

Seriously, if you don't agree you might be in the wrong place.

There is something about a freshly grilled burger eaten outside on a gorgeous summer day that can't be beat.

I'm a fan of a good greasy burger from my fave burger joint, The Burger's Priest.  They are pretty transcendent, but even they don't compare with a burger made with good meat, cooked in the open air.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (if you don't, get on it, you won't be sorry) you may remember a couple weeks ago lots of updates about my amazing dinner inspired by a visit to the farmer's market and the gorgeous weather. The short story is that I picked up some delicious beefsteak tomatoes and organic romaine at my local farmer's market. I know for many people that would mean a lovely salad and I'm sure it would have made a lovely salad but my mind immediately went to burgers.  I think partially because we hadn't had them in awhile, but also because I had just seen Zoe Francois' post about baking buns on the grill.  My house is a hot box in the summer, the oven is the last thing I want to turn on, it's that hot.  So the prospect of being able to make fresh baked buns on the grill was amazing.

Whole Wheat Brioche

Up until a year and a half ago any attempts I had made at bread baking had been laughable  and then two very special books came into my life and changed this entirely.  Those books are Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  If you haven't seen or heard of these books, go to your local book store or go online, check them out and buy them.  I promise if you feel like a bread failure they will cure it.  I honestly can't remember the last time I bought a commercial loaf of bread, probably in a pinch but since I've been fortunate enough to be writing and working from home I generally have the time to plan ahead and prep some dough.

I love brioche, but am trying to focus more on incorporating whole grains into our diet.  Lucky for me Healthy Bread in Five has a Whole Wheat Brioche recipe in it.  I tried it a couple time with some serious fails, and began to get really frustrated until I went to the Artisan Bread in Five blog and found that there was unfortunately a typo in my printed edition of the book.  Well that made me feel so much better, knowing that I hadn't lost my bread mojo.  I don't generally share recipes from these books on the blog because I truly think everyone needs to own these books, but as they have already shared the correct recipe online I figured I could save some other people out there from the frustrations I felt with the recipe in my book and maybe convince others to go out and buy the books.  

Whole Wheat Biscuits

I like biscuits, now I'm not from the South, (although according to my Canadian boy the US as a whole is the South) but I've spent some time in both North & South Carolina so I'd like to say I know what good biscuits are. That being said I've never had much luck making my own. I recently had a serious craving for biscuits but knowing that that much dough is never a good idea especially when I've been trying to use more whole grains at home, I thought I could somewhat keep in line with my whole grains goal by using whole wheat flour. So I did a web search for whole wheat biscuits and happened upon the recipe over at RecipeZaar. RecipeZaar is a resource my friend Suz over at You Can't Eat What swears upon, but I just don't use that often. After my winning banana cupcakes and this recipe I've decided I should. Not only do the recipes seem good, but they have this amazing feature that lets you change the amount of servings you want for a particular recipe and their handy calculator then alters the ingredient amounts to what you need, no more futzing around trying to figure out how to cut a recipe down by a 1/3. It's pretty brilliant with a recipe like this where it makes 12 biscuits but the boy and I so don't need 12 biscuits kicking around the house.


Whole Wheat Biscuits
from recipezaar.com

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp margarine or butter (we had I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in the fridge so I used that)
1 cup skim milk

1. Combine flours, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Cut in margarine with a pastry blender or 2 knives. Add milk, mix quickly.
2. Turn out onto a floured board. Knead 6 to 8 times. Roll 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 12, 2 inch round biscuits or into wedges or squares.
3. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake in a 425°F oven 12 to 15 minutes until lightly browned.

A concern with using whole wheat flour was that you wouldn't get light a fluffy biscuits, well for me making biscuits with any flour that is a concern. You can work biscuit dough too much or you end up with hockey pucks, which I have many times before. It's funny to me that using a flour that many people had problems getting to rise allowed me to finally get a light and fluffy biscuit. I'd like to think it's because my baking skills have improved that much since my last biscuit attempt over a year ago. These were delicious and at only 95 calories a serving, something I'd be happy to make the next time a biscuit craving hits. My one complaint was that in using the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter my biscuits didn't get golden brown, I may try using real butter next time to see if it makes a difference. Enjoy!