Baking & the Big Screen: Hamburger Buns & Burnt
I’m finding a lot of joy in the search of “movies with baking” I’m now doing every month, in hopes of discovering some more food + movie combinations to explore. So far, even if the movies have been bad, it’s been fun to pull inspiration. This month was one of the better pairings I’ve had in a while: Burnt, a six-year-old movie with a solid cast, and hamburger buns, which is weirdly featured during a scene set at a Burger King in London. However, I decided to take some liberty with the baking side of this. Hamburger buns are all fine and good, but what’s even better? Hawaiian rolls. So I decided to make my own version of a burger bap, as I believe the UK calls it (per an episode of Great British Baking Show), and it was so much fun.
Burnt
Starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Daniel Brühl, Matthew Rhys, Emma Thompson, Uma Thurman, Alicia Vikander, Lily James
Director: John Wells
Released in 2015
Available to watch on IMDB TV via Amazon Prime
When I first looked up Burnt to see where I could stream it, I was a bit terrified when I saw the movie had a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe that ended up helping the movie out as my expectations were so low that I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was incredibly cliche at times, and Bradley Cooper’s character was truly unlikeable, but as someone who is systematically making her way through every Top Chef episode that is in existence, I was still intrigued enough to keep it on. The simple joy of watching people make food, fictional or non, was enough for me. I’m not sure I’d even recommend it to people, but it served its purpose.
The overarching story is decent enough. Previous “bad boy” chef Adam Jones (Cooper) comes back to his roots in order to rehabilitate his image and earning a restaurant three Michelin stars. Some people hate him, some just don’t like him, some are apparently in love with him, which is a thing that definitely comes out of nowhere and is given zero buildup or prompting. But hey, the food is awfully pretty to look at, and Emma Thompson - for some reason - is in this movie and that was a nice perk that I didn’t see coming. Burnt was a movie I’d intended to watch for a while, just because I do enjoy food-based films, and that’s what it was. Expectations were met, and the 28% seems pretty unfair, if you ask me.
I’ve made pretzel rolls many times and even made my own loaf of wheat bread before, but this was the first time I tried to make more of a ‘standard’ bun. But that wasn’t exciting enough for me, so I decided to branch out a bit more and make them Hawaiian, because those soft, sweet rolls are one of my favorite carbs on the planet. The first surprise was discovering they get their characteristic sweetness from pineapple juice, which makes perfect sense once I knew, but was originally something I’d never considered. The second surprise was that despite following the recipe exactly, the buns that came out of this were GIANT. Other than creating an extra two buns out of the dough before baking, I’d make this again and again just how they were. This is one of my biggest baking successes so far, and it is freaking delicious and worth every second.