Wednesday Baking-Homemade Hamburger Buns

I originally posted this recipe on my now-defunct baking blog (it was too much work to maintain a separate baking blog, which is why we now do Wednesday Baking here!), and I’ve been meaning to move it over here, but just haven’t gotten around to it. I brought these to a church function on Saturday, though, and got a few recipe requests, which reminded me that I needed to get this posted. I’ve linked to this recipe before in my menu plans, but now it has a Frugal Girl post of its own. 😉

By the way, a printable version(i.e. with fewer pictures) is available here.

We use these for BBQ beef sandwiches, hamburgers, ham sandwiches, and pulled chicken sandwiches. Leftover buns make delicious garlic toast…just split, spread with garlic butter, and broil until browned.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

1/2 cup warm water(105 F)
2 packages(4 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 teaspoons salt
4 1/2-5 1/2 cups flour
2 eggs

Combine yeast and water in large mixer bowl. Let stand.

While the yeast and water are standing, combine milk, butter, sugar, and salt, and heat in the microwave until lukewarm(105 degrees F). By the time that’s done, the yeast should look like this:

Add the lukewarm milk mixture to the yeast. Add 2 cups of flour and mix well. Add 2 eggs, and mix until combined.

The dough will be sort of like a batter at this point.

Add enough flour to make a relatively stiff dough.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic. I use a bench knife to make this process easier when the dough is first being kneaded and is still rather soft.

After kneading, it should look like this.

Put it into a bowl, cover with a wet tea towel, and let rise for 1 hour…

at which point it should look like this:

Punch the dough down and turn out onto a floured surface. Divide into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball, and then flatten each into a disk. Below, from left to right are a divided 16th of the dough, a dough ball, and a flattened disk. Place each disk onto a greased baking sheet, cover with a wet tea towel, and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

This is before rising(as you can see, mine are far from perfect circles!)…

…and this is after. At this point, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Once the oven is heated, bake the buns for 12-14 minutes, or until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. They should look something like this:

Cool on a wire rack.

The buns can be brushed with a mixture of egg and water before baking, but all I had when I was making these was organic eggs, and I hate to use those to make shiny buns!