Hamburger Buns

These are well worth the effort—they get an 8.5, and the recipe came from annies-eats.com. Also, these had cooled for about 4 hours by the time I took the picture, so they look better out of the oven before they cool. They weren’t bad for a first effort, but the next time they will be better because I will know more what to do. I am good with bread, but I added too much flour. I made some notes below, but I will definitely make these again (Sunday, in fact!)

Hamburger Buns

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. sugar

2 ¼ tsp. instant yeast

¼ cup warm water (105°-115°)

1 cup warm milk (105°-115°) I used whole milk

1 tbsp. vegetable oil I used canola oil

1 tsp. salt

3 to 3 ¾ cups all-purpose flour In the recipe, she talks about how she had to add more flour, and I should have added way less. Even as it was, I probably only used 2 1/2 cups, 1 1/2 cups which was wheat flour. In other words, watch carefully based on the texture, don’t get fixated on the amount like I did. Mine had too much flour.

1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp. cold water

sesame, poppy or caraway seeds, or coarse salt, for topping I used sesame seeds

Directions:

In a bowl of an electric mixer, dissolve the sugar and then the yeast in the warm water. Add the milk, oil, salt and 1 ½ cups of flour to the yeast mixture. Beat vigorously for 2 minutes. Gradually add flour, 2 tablespoons at a time, until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Switch to the dough hook and knead until you have a smooth and elastic dough, about 7-9 minutes.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl. Turn once to coat the entire ball of dough in oil. Cover with a tightly-woven dampened towel and let rise until doubled, about one hour.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled work surface. Working with oiled hands, divide the dough into 9 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball, and flatten into 3 ½ -inch disks. For soft-sided buns, place them on a well-seasoned baking sheet a half-inch apart so they will grow together when they rise. For crisper bun, place them three inches apart.

Cover with a towel and let rise until almost doubled, about 45 minutes.

15 minutes before you want to bake the buns, preheat the oven to 400°. Just before baking, brush the tops of the buns lightly with the egg wash and sprinkle with any desired toppings.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 190°. When the buns are done, remove them from the baking sheet to cool on a wire rack. This will prevent the crust from becoming soggy.

* Note: This particular dough should be quite slack, i.e. very relaxed in order to make soft and tender buns. So you want to add only enough more flour, past the 3 cup point, to make the dough just kneadable, sprinkling in only enough more to keep it from sticking to you or the work surface.

Source: adapted from King Arthur Flour

http://www.annies-eats.com/2008/09/30/hamburger-buns/

Melissa’s Source

Recipe retrieved 4/17/15 from http://www.annies-eats.com/2008/09/30/hamburger-buns/