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Nut-Free/Dairy-Free Option
Skill Level: Intermediate
Yield: 8 hamburger buns
Prep Time: 3 hours, 30-40 minutes (this includes 3 hours total of rising time)
Cook Time: 15-17 minutes
Equipment Needed:
Bench scraper (optional, but I find it very useful when making breads)
Pastry brush (optional, but helpful)
Dish towel
The Recipe:
This recipe is adapted from the website Domestic Dreamboat
Ingredients:
1 envelop (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1 cup water that is between 105 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Vegetable oil
1 tablespoon milk (optional)
Toppings such as sesame seeds, granulated garlic, granulated onion, poppy seeds (optional)
Procedure:
Measure your water and heat it in the microwave. I usually heat for 1 minute and read the temperature. It's usually just above where I want it to be, so then I'll just leave the thermometer in the water and watch the temperature go down until it's perfect.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, water and 1/2 cup of the flour. Use a whisk to combine thoroughly. Allow this mixture to sit for 10-15 minutes, or until it looks foamy (see pictures in tips). Important: if it never foams, your yeast is probably old/inactive or your water was too hot or too cold. This will likely affect your end product.
While you are waiting to check if your yeast is active, prepare a large mixing bowl by pouring a small amount of vegetable oil into the bowl and using a folded paper towel or pastry brush to completely coat the bowl with oil. It should be a very thin layer; you should not see a pool of oil in the bottom of your bowl.
Stir the melted butter, 1 egg, sugar, and salt into the yeast mixture.
Add 2 1/2 cups flour and knead with a dough hook in a stand mixer until all of the flour has been incorporated, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times with a rubber spatula. You could also do this by hand, it will just take longer.
From here, you will want to assess your dough. If it's already pulling away from the sides of the mixing bowl a good amount, it may be good to go. Mine was still sticking to the sides of the bowl quite a bit, so I opted to mix in more flour. If you go this route, you will want to add flour 1 tablespoon at a time, then knead it completely in. I ended up adding 3 additional tablespoons of flour, and at that point the dough was pulling away from the sides of the mixing bowl as it kneaded, plus it looked very smooth and stretchy.
Put 1-2 tablespoons of flour down on a clean countertop or cutting board. Make sure to spread it out a bit; it shouldn't be one pile of flour (see photo in tips).
Use a rubber spatula to get your dough out of the mixing bowl and onto your floured counter. I usually sprinkle just a little flour on top of my dough, too. Knead the dough by hand 10-12 times, rolling it around in the flour if it gets too sticky (i.e., a lot of it seems to be coming off on your hands).
Transfer the dough to your oiled mixing bowl and use a pastry brush to lightly coat the top of the dough with oil. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper, a tea towel, or plastic wrap to avoid the dough drying out as it rises.
Place bowl in a warm place to rise until the dough doubles in size, about 2 hours.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Lightly flour a clean countertop or cutting board. Turn your dough out onto your floured surface and use your hands to form it into a log shape. The idea is to keep it as uniform in width as possible.
Use a butter knife or bench scraper to lightly mark the dough where you will cut it (you will be cutting 8 pieces). I start by making a mark in what looks like the center, then marking halfway between the center and one end, and finally marking halfway between those 4 marks. If you feel like you really messed up, just rub your marks away and start over.
Once your marks look fairly even, use a sharp knife or your bench scraper to cut straight down through each mark. Pull once piece of dough out and cover the rest with a dish towel as you work, to avoid them from drying out.
Working with one piece of dough at a time, form it into a smooth ball. I look for a smooth section of the dough piece and name this "no man's land" in my head; that means I don't touch it. I hold the dough piece directly under "no man's land" and start pulling the dough down towards my fingers, pinching the dough with my holding-hand as I go (see photos in tips).
Once you have a nice smooth ball, place it on your prepared baking sheet and flatten it slightly with the palm of your hand. Repeat with remaining 7 dough pieces, placing about 1/2 inch apart on your sheet. Cover sheet loosely with a piece of parchment paper or plastic wrap and set in a warm place to double in size, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
When buns have risen, whisk together 1 egg and 1 tablespoon milk in a small bowl.
Use a pastry brush to very gently coat the top of each bun with the egg mixture. This will help give your buns a beautiful sheen on top.
If you are adding additional toppings such as sesame seeds, sprinkle them on just after you coat the tops of the buns in the egg mixture.
Bake buns for 15-17 minutes, or until they are a lovely shade of golden brown. Allow to cool before using a serrated bread knife to slice them in half.
To Serve: These buns take hamburgers, black bean burgers and sandwiches to the next level! If you will not be using all of the buns within 2 days, store leftovers in the freezer for up to 1 month.
Adjusting for your diet: I have never tried making these with a gluten-free flour, but if you do-please report back and let me know if they turn out all right!
If you do not consume dairy, omit the milk in step 18. It adds a richness to the buns that you could totally live without if dairy is not your thing.
Tips:
Homemade bread can seem like a daunting task, but if you plan ahead the actual hands-on time is relatively low; waiting for the bread to rise 2 different times is what takes the longest. If you have an afternoon where you will be home anyways, I encourage you to give this a try-you won't believe the difference in taste!
As mentioned in the recipe, the initial step of mixing the yeast with the warm water is really a test to see if your yeast is active. You really do need to make sure your water is in that 105-115 temperature range; if it's too cold the yeast might not "wake up," and if it's too hot you might kill the yeast.
I would say the whole process of kneading the dough in the stand mixer took about 10 minutes, give or take.
When flouring the counter, you don't want to dump too much in one spot. I sprinkle a little bit, then use my hands to pat and spread it out a bit.
My oven has a setting for "bread proof" on it, which is awesome. It heats the oven just the tiniest bit, so that is where I put my dough to rise. If yours does not have that button, simply preheat your oven to the lowest temp possible (usually 170 degrees) before you start the recipe, and when it is preheated, turn it off. By the time you're ready to let your dough rise, it should be just slightly warm (do NOT forget your dough is in there though; there is a funny anecdote related to this in the story).
When sectioning off your dough, as I mentioned above you want to try to make the dough "log" as even in width as possible. As you can see below, I didn't do a very good job :) but I actually don't mind if I get a few buns that are smaller in size because those are perfect for my kids. If you really wanted to make these all perfectly uniform in size, weighing the dough out using a kitchen scale would be the way to go.
Update: I did try weighing my dough the next time I made these buns, and not only was it exceedingly easy but the buns turned out so nice and uniform; I'll never go back!! All I did was use a kitchen scale to weigh the whole ball of dough, then did a quick calculation to divide the total weight by 8 (you could also make 10 buns if you wanted them a bit smaller). From there I used my bench scraper to remove a chunk of dough, weighed it, and adjusted the size until it was pretty close to what I wanted. The very last bun was a tiny bit bigger than the rest, but I called it good.
A clean-up tip: your bench scraper also works marvelously to gather up flour and bits of dough from your countertop and sweep them right off the counter and into the garbage can you are holding just below.
The Story:
The first time I attempted to make homemade buns was the summer of 2020 (this was my covid baby). I had gone to the grocery store during the time when you were really supposed to be limiting going out in public, and had gotten everything to make hamburgers, but forgot to get buns. Determined to stay put (and also a little bored, not like we had anywhere to be...), I decided to give making them myself a shot. I remember being SO surprised at how easy they were, and even more surprised at how amazing they tasted.
I always have these staple baking ingredients on hand, so there is really no excuse for me to not be making these fresh in the summertime when I'm off school. A little advanced planning is all it takes!
The addition of milk, sugar, egg and melted butter in these buns give them such a delicious and rich taste. I had to smack several little hands away while these were cooling because the scent was so divine.
As promised, I have a funny story about letting bread rise in a warmed oven. I was at a cabin weekend with some girlfriends about 12 years ago and decided to bring everything needed to make pizza from scratch. I used my little oven trick to let the pizza dough rise in the oven. A little while later (cocktail hour may have started at this point...), I started to prep the pizza topping options and preheated my oven to 500 degrees to bake the pizzas. When the toppings were all prepped, I looked around for my pizza dough...and realized it was still in the oven where I'd left it to rise. In a plastic mixing bowl. I opened the oven door to find the bowl literally melting in fat drips to the bottom of the oven...oops. Needless to say we had to go to "Plan B" for dinner that night.
DON'T be intimidated by homemade bread, you can do it!! If you're attempting homemade buns for the first time, let me know your thoughts in the comments :)
Happy tasting!
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