Make Your Own Hamburger and Hot Dog Buns

Unless I catch a good sale, I sometimes cannot believe the price of hamburger and hot dog buns. $4 and up around here. If they’re on sale, $2 is good but they’re often pasty limp buns.

Tonight I made my own hamburger buns in my bread machine. I used arecipe I found in a bread machine cookbook I picked up 8 years ago when I bought my bread machine but I see they have a new edition out!   Bread Machine Magic, Revised Edition: 138 Exciting Recipes Created Especially for Use in All Types of Bread Machines. If you don’t have any whole wheat flour, you can probably use all white flour. I just like to sneak some whole wheat in where I can and these were totally light!

• 1 cup water
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbs active dry yeast

Put it all n your bread machine and set the machine to the dough cycle.  When the machine beeps that the dough is ready, pull the dough out onto a lightly floured cutting boar.

Use your hands to shape the dough into a one foot (12″) rope.

Hamburger Buns

For hamburger buns, cut into eight pieces. (Cut in half, then cut each half in half, then cut each piece in half yet again.)  Form the pieces into balls and place on a greased cookie sheet, then flatten with the palm of your hand.

Homemade Hot Dog Buns

For hot dog buns, cut this into 12 pieces and roll each piece into 6″ rolls.

For either:

Cover with a clean towel and let rise 15 minutes or so, until doubled basically. If you need to create a warm spot for the buns to rise, turn your oven onto warm or low heat for a couple of minutes, then turn it off.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. (If you had the buns rising in your oven, remove them first!)  Bake 12-15 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. Cut hamburger buns in half when ready to use. Split hot dog buns open.