Hamburger and Hotdog Bun Recipe

I decided that my messed-with Peter Reinhart recipe was a little too weird to put up. Fortunately, my new favorite cookbook, Happy in the Kitchen has one that’s pretty darn good. I fiddled with it a tad of course (I can’t help myself), and here is the result. It works very, very well and makes a dough which, while still rather wet, isn’t terribly challenging to handle.

1 pound bread flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 egg well beaten for egg wash

Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. With the machine running, pour in the water and then the oil, stopping when everything is well combined. Scoop the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for 1 hour (or until doubled in size). Turn the dough out onto a well-floured pastry board. Cut the dough into 2-ounce pieces (you should have roughly 15 of them). Roll each piece into a ball (as directed in the below post!). When all the dough has been rolled, cover the balls with a kitchen towel and let them rest for ten minutes to relax the gluten. Shape as desired into either hamburger or hot dog buns, lay out on parchment-lined sheet pans, and cover with oiled plastic wrap. Proof for about an hour.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 450. When the buns are puffy, and feel almost hollow to the touch, put them in the oven on the middle and lower racks. After five minutes, take them out of the oven and paint them gently with egg wash. Return them to the oven for 5-7 more minutes until golden brown.