Go Big Bacon Cheeseburger

Inspired by the Go Big challenge my assistant and I decided to make a big burger. But it's really more than that. We attempted to push the limits of what could reasonably be called a burger to the extreme. In the design phase, we brainstormed what the dimensions could be. On the low side, it clearly had to be noticeably larger than a standard burger. On the upper end, we didn't want something so enormous that it couldn't be consumed before it went bad. In the end we rejected a gargantuan pizza sized burger because we felt that even if we could achieve one that size, it would not have the structural integrity we have come to expect from a burger. Floppy is not attractive in a burger!

Practical considerations won out, despite our big dreams. We found ourselves limited by the pans we had on had for making the bun. So our burger will measure 8" across. Future experiments will push these limits, no doubt, but 8" is a good starting point.

WARNING: We started this project at 4:30pm and did not eat until 8pm. Worth the wait though!

What do we need to make a giant hamburger? The bare minimum would be a bun and a burger. One could take the easy route and buy a premade loaf of bread from the bakery - a boule would be about the right shape. But we wanted something that closely mimicked a standard burger, so we opted to make our own. A plain burger is also somewhat dull, in this author's opinion, and not a very close facsimile of the type of burger one would enjoy. So here is what we used.

The Bread:

• 250 g strong bread flour (or all purpose ya peasant)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• 150 g lukewarm water (not hot, you will kill the yeast)
• 1 tsp olive oil
• metal mixing bowl
• measuring spoons
• digital scale (always weigh flour! my 1 cup of flour != your 1 cup of flour, so weigh it instead)
• 8" cake pan (if you go bigger, you will need more dough - 9" needs about 1/4 more dough, 12" would require 2.25x as much dough!)
• 1 egg (for egg wash)
• brush to brush on egg wash (or a paper towel if you don't have a brush)
• sesame seeds (gotta be authentic!)

The Hamburger:

• 2.5 lb ground beef
• 1 tsp onion powder (optional, boosts deliciousness 14%)
• 1 tsp galic powder (optional, 22% boost)
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce (optional, does something special)
• 1/2 tsp salt (NOT OPTIONAL)
• 1/4 tsp pepper (optional, I dunno, you put pepper in everything right?)
• jazz it up with your choice of hot sauce or chile powder or whatever if desired
• measuring spoons to measure the add ins
• metal mixing bowl to combine all this junk (slacker tip: use the bowl you made the bread dough in to save on dishwashing!)
• big pan or skillet or honestly if you don't have a pan 9 or 10" across, use a cake pan (not spring-form!) or a cookie sheet (with sides to contain the hamburger grease, obviously)

The Fixins:

• lettuce
• tomato
• red onion (yeah, sorry, gotta be red. Go buy one now. Might as well throw the whole thing out if it's a yellow onion)
• pickles
• ketchup
• mustard (if desired, kinda weird)
• mayo (is this a Southern thing?)
• salsa (I dunno, maybe???)
• bacon, preferrably thick cut (because it's big and thick cut bacon is big, too)
• cheese
• knife to cut this junk
• a mandoline to slice the onion (or just a knife, but you won't get things as precise)
• pan to cook the bacon (beyond the scope of this instructable. You can figure out how to cook bacon. I will just do it and not belabor the process)

The first thing you're going to want to do is make the bun. This is literally like 75% of the work. Maybe 85%. I have been an avid bread maker for years and my favorite dinner roll recipe is this weird little video I ran across on imgur. I love these rolls! they never fail, they are soft and delicious. Sometimes I made them as is, sometimes with mozarella and garlic, once with cinnamon and sugar. Amazingly versatile. Anyway, they make a darned fine giant burger bun as well.

First put 250 g of flour in a bowl. Add 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp active dry yeast. I see you grabbing the water, but wait! First mix the dry ingredients up in the bowl with your fingers. Did you wash your hands? You will need to you filthy animal. Next add 150 g of water. Then 1 tsp olive oil. Or regular vegetable oil if you don't have olive oil, I don't think anyone could possibly notice. It's like, a teaspoon. If someone wrinkles their nose and asks if you used corn oil, immediately throw them out of your house.

Now you can mix it up with a fork, but honestly you're going to have to get down and dirty and sticky with that dough soon enough anyway, you might as well bite the bullet. And save yourself washing another fork. To mix it effectively, I like to just mix it around with my fingers until there are no obvious giant clumps of flour. Then smoosh it around the sides - try to get all the extra flour off the sides of the bowl. Then squeeze the entire mass between your fingers. Do that like 7 times. Ok, it's good an mixed. Now set a timer for 7 minutes. Go ahead and knead it for 7 minutes. You're going to be tempted to skimp on this step. Isn't 5 minutes good enough? NO. Ya lazy good fer nothin. You will start with a very sticky ball of dough. You'll think, this guy is an idiot, this is too sticky. No, it's not. You will think, I'll just add a little pinch of flour. NO. Resist the urge.

But wait, you say, I don't know how to knead! Look, there are a million youtube videos out there, but if that is too much work, just do the following. Stretch the dough a little bit. Fold it in half. Push it together. Good and hard. Repeat. It takes like a few seconds to do that, so over the course of 7 minutes you will do that at least 100 times. The first 4 minutes you will be like, this is total bs. this sticky mess will never come together. When seven minutes are over you will be like, daaaaaamnm it worked! And you will have a smooth and not so sticky ball of dough. Mist the interior of the bowl with some cooking spray or some of that oil you used. No puddles, just a thin coating. If you're using oil directly, sop up the extra with a paper towel. You just want the ball to be not stuck to the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel. You don't want your bread drying out. You've put a lot of effort into it! Now go away and do something else for 40 minutes. Maybe go to the store and grab that red onion.

When you get back, the ball of dough should be nice and puffy. If it looks identical to when you put it in there, maybe wait a while. Twenty more minutes? Poke it. Does it spring back a bit? It's probably fine. Now take out your 8 inch cake pan. Does it matter if it's 8 inches? YES. You will need to scale up or down the amount of dough if it's not 8 inches. I use a cake pan because it stops the bread from expanding outwards and makes it rise upward, like a good burger bun should. First, hit the pan with some oil or cooking spray. We don't need it sticking and messing up our project. Now transfer the dough from the bowl to the pan. I try to do this fairly gently. Now mash... no, mash is too aggressive. Push down the dough so that it fills the cake pan to the edge. You want to make the dough the correct shape and also deflate it a bit, big bubbles in the dough will make colossal holes in the bun, that is not the result we want. Now take that plastic wrap from the last step and spray it with cooking spray and lay it over the top of the cake pan. tighten it up a bit so it is taut and not touching the dough. We don't want to deform our otherwise gorgeous bun at the last second by having it stick to the plastic wrap. You can probably make this work with your damp towel as well.

Now go away for 40 more minutes. Why forty you say? Trial and error. I know the little bread movie says an hour, but I've found 40 minutes is enough. Oops, I hope you haven't left yet, because you should actually go away for 30 minutes, then turn the oven to preheat to 355°F (180°C). Then wait 10 more minutes. Look at your dough. Does it look pretty good? Risen a bit? Vaguely in the shape you want? It won't look perfect yet, in the oven it rises a bit into a perfect shape. Before you put it in the oven, mix together one egg and a splash of water (exact amount is not crucial, maybe a tablespoon). Brush the egg wash on the top of the bun. If you don't have a brush a paper towel will do. If you don't have a paper towel, damn, man, you gotta get your life together. But for now you can use your hand to spread the egg wash. Do not apply too much pressure to the bun, you don't want to lose any of that beautiful rise. This will make it nice and glossy and help the sesame seeds stick. Sprinkle a few sesame seeds on top. Good coverage, but seeds should not touch.

Bake for 20 minutes once the oven is up to temp. Now look at it. The shape should already be good, but the color might be disappointing at this point. You can use a digital thermometer to check the temp, go in through the side so as not to disfigure the top of the bun with an unsightly hole. Temp of 195°F (90°C) should be good. If it doesn't look done, let it go 5 more minutes. After 25 minutes it should certainly be done. If the color still is not right, turn on the broiler. DO NOT LEAVE THE OVEN. Look in every 20 seconds. If you leave the oven just for a second to grab the phone, you will over broil and ruin all your hard work. It should brown up nicely within a minute or two. I take no responsibility if your bun is charred because you were careless with the broiler. It goes from pasty white to dark brown super fast, you want to pull it out at golden brown.

Finally, leave the bun out to cool for a bit. Leave it in the pan for at least 5 minutes, then ever-so-gently remove it and let it cool. At least 20 more minutes.

I put this as step two because it will take a bit of time and when the burger itself is done you won't want to wait that time. The perfect time to do this part is when the bun is cooking or cooling. NOT WHEN YOU'RE PERFECTING THE COLOR WITH THE BROILER!

Peel some lettuce off a head of lettuce. A few nice big leaves. You won't want little tiny baby shreds of lettuce falling off your otherwise perfect burger. Slice some tomato. About a quarter inch thick. Did you get the biggest tomato you could find? I mean, I didn't explicitly say that in the ingredients, but you knew what the project was. Some longitudinally sliced pickles would be cool if that's your thing. I feel like normal round dill pickle slices would just get lost in this giant burger. Slice up some extremely thin slices of red onion. Big chonky slices will ruin the entire experience, don't do that. Set this stuff all aside. Maybe in the fridge if you're going to be a while yet.

Slice up some cheese. Not crazy thick, but as thick as you prefer. It won't melt right. If it's too thin there will be no cheesy yum to it.

Cook up some bacon. Crispy, not rare like some sort of serial killer.

Set this stuff all aside. Keep the cheese handy because you need to put it on the burger while it's still cooking.

Ok, this part is both crucial and probably very familiar. Mix up the hamburger and the spices. Do not mix very thoroughly, you ruin the texture of the meat if you mix it up too much. I like to place the burger in the cold pan and shape it into a burger. Now here is the trick. Make the burger substantially larger than the bun. This is the most important tip in this instructable. Burger slightly overhanging the bun = sexy. Burger invisible from the outside = sadness. My bun was 8" so I made the raw burger disk 10" across in the pan. By the time it was done cooking it was a little more than 8" across. They shrink! Shrinkage! I cool it on medium low heat with the cover on the pan. You want it fully cooked all the way through. Nothing spoils an awesome fun dinner project like raw hamburger in the middle, bleah. Unless you are using extremely lean meat, you will probably need to pour off some of the grease to get it to brown nicely. Handling the burger is a very delicate operation. I wait until the first side is well cooked before I even try to flip it. I happen to have a giant spatula, but even with that I used a second spatula to keep it intact. You might want to use some combination of that and plates to get it to flip ok. If it breaks in half, you can hide the crack under the bun. Or under the cheese even. Don't forget the cheese. I put the cheese on when the burger was almost done. Otherwise too much melting and all the sweet, sweet cheese will slip away.

Now take your damned pictures. You know you're going to put this on social media. Drop a pic here if you make one and I will offer up suggestions if you're having problems. Feel free to offer suggestions or things that worked well for you, too. Can't wait to see your burgers!