Easy, Perfect Homemade Hamburger or Hot Dog Buns
June 12, 2008 by Marye Audet
Filed under Breads, Make ahead, Quick and Easy
Summer is the time for cook-outs for sure. When you can make homemade, delicious (soft!) hot dog and hamburger buns in less than an hour why in the world would you buy them?
Did I say less than an hour? Yep!
These freeze well so you can make them ahead of time. If you have a regular baking day, or OAMC weekend make up a few batches of these for the month and freeze them for quick meals anytime.
Most of us do not consider how many chemicals we take into our bodies. We watch fats, and eat healthy, but when you are buying prepared foods, like bread, you are getting all kinds of things that are unpronounceable. Even if you are not eating organic (and I really encourage you to do so as much as you can) making your own foods will keep many chemicals out of your family’s bodies.
And just because I am on a soapbox here….
Rant:Americans, for the most part, spend the least percentage of their paycheck of anyone in the world on groceries. We would rather have cable t.v. and a new car than high quality foods. What has happened in the last 50 years is that we have lost flavors! We are used to eating so bland that fresh foods taste too intense sometimes. You cannot buy a two week old carrot from Kroger and expect it to taste like a carrot picked fresh from your garden. You cannot buy beef that has been raised in stressful factory conditions, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and forced to be cannibalistic, ground up and then pumped full of stuff to make it red, and expect it to taste like beef that has been pastured and allowed to be raised in a humane and ethical manner. It amazes me that people will pay 4.00 a gallon for gas so they can run to the mall and yet will gravitate toward the 1.99 a lb stuff at wal-mart. End Rant
Give these a try, even if you aren’t used to working with a yeast dough. They are super simple!
Homemade Hot Dog or Hamburger Buns
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 1/2 cups flour (unbleached, whole wheat, or a mix)
1 package instant yeast
1 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 egg, room temperature
Heat the milk, water, honey and butter until butter is melted. Check temperature. Depending on the temperature, let cool to 120F. Carefully beat in egg.
Mix 2 cups of the flour, yeast, and salt. Mix into the milk mixture. Stir in the rest of the flour, 1/2 cup at a time. Beat well after each addition.
When the dough pulls together, (it will form a soft ball) turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. This should take about 5 minutes.
Divide dough into 12 -16 equal pieces. This will depend on the size you want for the finished bun. Shape into smooth balls, flatten slightly, and place on a silpat covered baking sheet.
Let rise for 30 to 35 minutes. When buns have almost doubled bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.
If you are making hot dog buns I find it easiest to roll the dough out into a large rectangle and cut into smaller rectangles. Let rise with sides touching.
You can brush the tops with egg wash and sprinkle with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, coarse sea salt, or whatever you like. You can add dry onion soup mix for onion rolls. These are very versatile!
Makes 12-16
Image: Marye Audet
hey hey hey!!! now this recipie I need!! my daily bread just doesn’t work for burgers and hotdogs….
Marye, I swear you get into my “baking” head. I was just thinking I should make my own hamburger and hotdog buns and should find a good recipe!
Thank you, thank you and thank you once again!
Monica- You will love these. I swear. They are so stinkin easy.
jen- LOL! Let me know what you think. If you use whole wheat or part whole wheat they will be less soft but oh so yummy
Loved the rant Marye – I would add to it (am I allowed to ADD to another person’s rant???) that we also spend far too much of that small percentage of money on crap food – like bread with corn syrup and about 30 other ingredients. I gave up store bought bread about a month ago and have been baking my own since. Love this recipe and I will be using it for sure!
You can add to my rant anytime, Jenn. I am honored, your majesty.
If you have a bread machine you can just run the dough cycle. (yeah i am hooked on my machine now)
I get so angry at how much bread the people in my home go through. (notice, I didn’t say ‘family’). My husband’s family is so wasteful, it is disgraceful and they won’t even try to make anything. If I wasn’t cooking, their kids would be as fat as they were before from all the grease, chips, and other gunk eaten.
They’re so lazy they won’t even TRY the GFCF diet for their autistic son! It’d be ‘too much work’.
We’re so trained to be lazy thanks to store bought junk. Grr. Glad you ranted, this has been on my mind for a long time, too.
Hey, I promised to share the rasin bread, so here is a link to the website. I use milk instead of water and powdered milk in this.
The page has a bunch of bread machine recipes, all can be made by hand. We had raisin bread again this morning!
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/breadmachinerecipes.htm
Um, I should have pasted it, right?
LOL! Baby brain, Julie.
Yep. Just did that with an email, too. Yikes.
LOL
Marye,
I made the buns, some dog and some burger. They are wonderful and easy. Even with the addition of part whole wheat, they stayed soft. Thank you!
Hey,
Thanks so much for posting this recipe! I am going to make them tonight (but cut the recipe in half because I’m only cooking for me!) and I think that they’ll be great. My mouth is already watering thinking about my scrummy dinner.
p.s. TOTALLY agree with your rant!
Great Jessica! Let me know what you think
YAY!!! I have been making sandwich bread and challah for a couple years now….I am so glad to find a “bun” recipe & instructions. Thanks so much! I am sick of poisoning myself at the supermarket.
Tried this recipe for Dog Buns. All I managed to do is waste $10 worth of ingredients and 2 hours. The instructions don’t mention what dimensions the raw formed dough should be before baking. Thanks for nothing.
Sorry BL, no one else has had a problem with them. With yeast dough it is almost impossible to tell you what size they should be for what you want.
12 to 16 assumes that you cut the dough into 12-16 equal pieces depending on the size you want.
No one else seems to have a problem because they don’t bother writing back, They just look elsewhere.
“Mix 2 cups of the flour, yeast, and salt. Mix into the flour mixture.” I think you mean mix into the MILK mixture. You also add the egg in the wrong step. You don’t add the egg to the hot milk mixture, you add it to the entire mixture when you add the rest of the flour. Otherwise, you destroy the protein binders.
Then, to make Dog buns, you divide the dough into even pieces and THEN roll them out into rectangles, and then roll them longways and pinch the edge shut.
I didn’t look close enough at the recipe to see the mistakes in it before letting my wife attempt to make the buns. By doing it your way the dough doesn’t rise, and you end up with flat nasty cardboard. Having followed this recipe exactly, she felt pretty stupid until I explained the flaws in it.
Thanks anyway.
Again, the comments staqte that others have made these without problem. there are NO flaws in the recipe I have been making it for years as have other people.
WHile for other breads what you say is true in this particular recipe it must be done this way to come out with the softer product.
normally, if someone has a problem I do try to help figure out what went wrong but in this case you are one of those that is just extremely rude.
BL,
I think where you, or rather your wife ran into the problem, was having the mixture to hot when she added the egg. The recipe clearly states 120°, in cooking terms this is very cool. (just 20 or so degrees above body temp) This is why you had your “protein binders” issue.
It is a good recipe, you should try it again paying closer attention to your temperatures.
Hope this helps.
P.S I don’t think Marye is posting recipes to waste your time and $10, so ease off the hostility.
Moon
I
Aww…thanks Moon.
Thank you for the easy recipe – worked perfectly! And a side note (baby rant) in regards to BL – besides the rude tone, the comment “before letting my wife …” says it all! I wonder how much his wife loves being “allowed” to make his dinner – she sure is one lucky lady!
I am glad it worked for you Jennifer! No more commercial hamburger buns!
I am going to be trying this shortly with my sourdough starter. Mostly because of all the recipes that i was able to find online it seemed to have a decent place to swap in the starter for the encapsulated yeast.
Deirdre- I think it would work really well. WOuld you come back and let me know how it did?
they came out less fluffy than i expected. I think i may have grabbed the yeast at the wrong proofing stage. Will try again in the future. it’s tasty but needs another try.
First of all these worked fine for me and I found them quite good. However, I can see where BL (or his wife) may have had problems because they didn’t pay close attention. The recipe calls for instant yeast, but most people use dry active which often needs to be proofed in some warm water. Secondly, after heating the butter mixture you need to let it cool before adding the egg or adding it to the flour mix. If you add this mixture to the yeast while it is too hot… you’ll kill the yeast and likely will end up with tasty cardboard.
Sorry for the mini-rant on your blog. This all being said, my girlfriend and I enjoyed these buns with hamburgers last night, and they were excellent. Thank you.
Just made the rolls, they are great! The only thing I found was that there was no way that 4 1/2 cups flour would go into the recipe. I ended up only having to use a little over 3 1/2 cups. Just something to keep an eye on when you’re making them…
LL it depends on the flour that you are using and the humidity etc. I assure you that I tested the recipe with 41/2 cups..sometimes I have bneeded 5 and sometimes only 3 1/2.
Thanks for a great recipe! This will be my standard hamburger bun staple. They came out soft and perfect with 100% whole wheat. My family loved them!
Awesome Mrs D! that is great to hear
I was wondering what silpat covered baking sheet means? I really want this recipe to turn out.
EH Silpat is a silocone sheet that you can use instead of oiling the baking sheet or parchment. You can use parchment instead or lightly oil the sheet.
Hello, with the yeast, can you use dry active yeast, and if so, how much. I want to make enough to feed about 50 people. I can get the yeast from my work, and we get dry active yeast by the bulk.
shane I believe the recipe calls for active dry yeast.
Thankyou for this recipe! I’ll be trying it rather modified today to accommodate my food allergies.
Nut milk instead of milk, egg white plus some flax meal instead of whole eggs, margarine and ghee instead of butter, and spelt flour instead of regular flour. If it comes out, I’ll post back!
I would be interested to hear how i works for you, Brenda!
i made hot dog buns, i think i overdid the flour because it didn’t rise as much as i would have hoped. but the texture and flavor were awesome! i will definitely be using this recipe often! thanks so much.
Good ! I am glad it worked for you! Keep trying, it is an easy recipe and once you get it exactly how you like it you will make it lots I am sure.
I’m going to try to make these tonight and have a question. I re-read BL’s rude rant and while he was overly rude, he did bring up a question about the “add to flour mixture”. I will follow a recipe to the EXACT letter, so does it really mean “add to the milk mixture”? (there doesn’t seem to be a flour mixture prior to this step.) I am a newbie to cooking, and sometimes something can be very clear to others, but I’m totally unsure of my abilities so I want to know without a shadow of a doubt. -AND- What does dough look like when it “pulls together”? Sorry for such trivial questions, but I just don’t have the experience yet.
Pammi yes it does mean to the milk mixture. I fixed the wording in the recipe. Also when the dough pulls together it will form a soft ball.
Thank you so much for your quick response! If you freeze them, how long do they have to thaw before cooking? I know a full recipe will be way too much, but would love to be able to freeze them for a later time.
You can freeze them baked as well. From frozen I would allow them to thaw for several hours to overnight in the fridge before baking.
I didn’t get to make the buns the day I thought I was going to, but made them over the weekend. I guess I didn’t wait until the “soft ball” formed. I turned the dough out (rather the glob of semi-runny mixture) and couldn’t control it. (I’m sure I was a hoot to watch.) Anyway…I ended up having to put much more flour into it to make it keep from running off the counter top.
The buns ended up tasting very good, but they were a little too solid because of the extra flour. I knew I would probably screw them up, so I just had fun with it anyway. Next time, I’ll make sure I mix thoroghly before trying to turn it out to knead. Do I need to use a mixer? (I didn’t.) I appreciate your assistance here. I intend on becoming an expert homemade burger bun maker – eventually!
Oh, what a wonderful recipe! I’m a novice baker (this was my second time baking bread) and they came out perfectly! They’re light and fluffy and so tasty. Thanks so much. I can’t believe I paid so much for hamburger and hotdog buns that don’t have actual taste for so long. Never again!
awesome! Thanks Bunny for letting me know!
These are incredible. Fast, easy, good. Doesn’t get much better than that in the kitchen. I treasure good recipes that contain ingredients I have on hand always. This is one of them. I’ve been in the kitchen for 50 years and this recipe is the BEST. Thank you for sharing it. BTW, maybe the grouch (BL) who tore your recipe apart could use a Fig Newton and a nap.
Thanks Again!
Laurie
well Laurie! Thank you so much! I think I could use a fig newton and a nap..
Has anybody tried doubling this recipe? I need a huge batch for tomorrow, a wedding BBQ actually. I know some yeast recipes just don’t work well doubled.
Guess I’ll try and find out! If anyone knows, I’d appreciate your input. Thanks in advance.
Laurie you can double it or triple it no problem
I made these this weekend, they turned out ok and everyone loved them. However, I did decide to make them a second time making a small change.
I put the dough in a buttered bowl and let it rise for about an hour.
Then I punched it down shapped into buns.
Then I let it rise a second time for 1 hour.
The buns came out softer this way.
I did make two bathes, one by hand and one using the bread machine using the dough cycle for mixing only, and there was no difference in either batch. This recipe makes lovely buns. Thank you so much for sharing it.
glad you liked them AB
I made these hamburger buns today and absolutely loved them. The texture was perfect for me and my family. I’ll be making these again and again. Great recipe!
thanks!
I just made these today…they look great and smell wonderful, can’t wait to grill the burgers for them! I used a mix of white, whole wheat and rye flour. Thanks for posting this recipe for others to enjoy.
The flour combo sounds fantastic!
Hi,
I’m really looking forward to making them, but I live in Norway – do you know how many g/oz are in a ‘package of instant yeast’? Ours are 11g…not sure if it’s different…
Thanks so much!
Paula*
Paula, a package of yeast is 7 grams…I think. …it is 2 1/2 teaspoons, roughly.Thanks for visiting …and I hope that helps.
I found your recipe and am hoping to be able to use it. My son has just been diagnosed with MORE food allergies. Between his and his sister’s I am having a difficult time. The problem I am having with this recipe is if I can replace the butter with Lard. Do you think it will turn out ok? I am going to replace the milk with Rice milk. That shouldn’t be a problem. But all butters and shortenings have either soy, dairy, or both. We can’t have either. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Renee Lard will work just fine. In fact if you can findthe real, old fashioned leaf lard it may be even better.
You can also use vegetable oil.
My son has dairy allergies. I replace butter with safflower oil. I also replace the milk with either water or soy milk.
that works, Lori!
Wonderful is how I describe this simple recipe. Made them tonight as I found I didn’t have any burger rolls in the fridge. I found this recipe and was skeptical but they were just amazing. I used my kitchen aid to do the kneading of the dough and it really helped them to rise quite high and were very fluffy.
thank you for letting me know, Yasmin..
I am glad they worked for you.
OK Miss Mary, I just started baking over the last year and just really enjoy ceating STUFF. I can’t wait to try your bun recipe for both dogs and burgs. The recipe looks straight forward enough. I’ll stop and pick up some yeast (instant) tomorrow, but I rarely use it. Can I do the same thing with regular yeast?
Gerry- the regular yeast should work just fine..you may have to give it a little extra rising time.
I have been looking forever for a recipe that I can use to produce the Howard Johnson hot dog bun which you can grill on both sides. The only hot dog buns I can find are the usual one kind that is everywhere.
How can I adapt this recipe to produce the Howard Johnson hot dog bun?
Thanks so much for addressing my request.
Sorry, I have no clue. I don’t even know what the Howard Johnson Hotdog bun is…. although I ate there a million times when I was a kid
Marye, thank you for answering my question regarding the Howard Johnson hot dog bun. I think, since you have supplied such a great recipe, I shall give it a whirl and see what happens.
Again, thank you for your kind response. I shall be watching for further recipes. Your site is really well developed and informative.
Tablescape
I hope you like it.