Easy Homemade Hamburger Buns
Today I’m ditching the whole wheat flour for a soft and fluffy
Homemade Hamburger Bun made with unbleached bread flour (King
Arthur’s brand). Let’s be honest here… the two are just not
the same!
I’ve been experimenting a lot with baking breads lately and
I’ve come to realize that using all whole wheat flour will NOT
yield the same result as using bread flour. I used to think I
could just sub whole wheat flour in for anything. The more and
more I experiment the more I’m coming to see that making that
substitution has been causing me to think I’m just not good at
baking breads. I’ve been longing for a perfect result…and
have come up short time and time again.
I’ve known bread flour was a completely different animal for
years, after all I did spend $25,000 on Baking and Pastry
School. You see, bread flour has a higher protein content
which makes it better for gluten development. This is going to
give you a nicer rise and a fluffier product. I’ve seen people
making substitutions between all purpose and bread flour,
however I strongly recommend using bread flour for this recipe
because I promise….it is just perfect!
I know yeast breads are scary… and believe me… I know why.
With all of my experimentations lately I fully understand the
complete letdown you feel when you’ve dedicated time, energy,
and money into something that just doesn’t produce the results
you were looking for. Today I’m taking the “scary” out of
Homemade Hamburger Buns because if you follow this recipe I
promise you will get the same results pictured. All of my
Hamburger Buns were perfect, and far superior to those
processed, shelf stable buns you buy at the supermarket that
NEVER mold!
A few other notes about these Buns:
Do not skip the egg wash! Egg wash is simply an egg + a
bit of water brushed onto your buns before you bake them
to give them that nice golden brown color. I have tried
to cut corners by skipping the egg wash on yeast breads
over and over again and every time I end up thinking
“Gee I wish I would have used that egg wash” when my
product isn’t nice and golden brown like I hoped it
would be.
Temperature matters. Temperature is a crucial part of
baking yeast breads. You can actually kill the yeast if
your water is too hot, so be careful. I never take the
temperature of the water with a thermometer, but when my
water feels ever so slightly warmer then lukewarm,
that’s what I go with. Obviously, that’s not the
“professional” method of figuring out water temperature
but it has never failed me. How quickly your dough rises
also depends upon the temperature of the room your dough
is in. My kitchen is always a little warmer then the
rest of the house, which is great for rising dough. In
the winter I turn my oven on and sit the dough on top of
the oven. Again, nothing “professional” about this, just
my own experience.
This dough can be turned into a number of things:
Hamburger Buns, breadsticks, garlic bread, hoagie
rolls…. you name it. I adapted the recipe from this
Almost Famous Breadsticks recipe from Food Network. It
is definitely my new favorite dough!
Strawberry
Salad
and
Poppy
Seed
We’ve discussed store-bought dressings and how horrible they
actually are for our health a few times before. To catch
anyone who missed those posts up, turns out store bought
dressings are nothing more then highly refined and cheap oils,
MSG, abbreviated chemicals, and preservatives. My theory on
store-bought dressings is this: If you are going to make a
beautiful and nutritious salad why pour a bunch of crap on top
of it? It kind of defeats the whole purpose! The other problem
with store bought dressings are the unethical companies who
make them. They love to pretend they are using olive oil, when
in fact if you turn the bottle over you will see the main
ingredient is soybean oil. Why label the front “Olive Oil”
when olive oil is the 5th or 6th ingredient? Nothing makes
sense about the marketing tactics they use, and I hate to see
consumers who are trying to be healthy be fooled by these
companies!
With that being said, I am so happy to share this recipe with
you! Nothing says “summer” quite like a strawberry and poppy
seed salad. My favorite season is summer simply because of the
delicious local produce stands that pop up along the country
roads of Central Pennsylvania. I love, love, love local
strawberries that are red throughout, small, and sweet. They
are vastly different then the grocery store strawberries, and
so much tastier!
For the salad I used dark, nutritious, leafy spring mix along
with feta cheese, strawberries, and walnuts. For the dressing,
all you have to do is put a few simple ingredients into a food
processor, and drizzle olive oil into it. After the oil is in,
add the poppy seeds and your done! There is no reason to even
use store bought dressing when making your own healthy
dressing is this easy!