Hamburger Buns.

You're going to love this one - real home made fluffy hamburger buns.


We're not talking the little hamburgers from White Castle. These mothers will beat even the worst munchies that Jay and Kumar could ever come up with.


You know how the buns from the shop become stodgy and collapse when you make a proper country style, man-sized hamburger barbecued with fresh premium mince, onions, pineapple, beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, lots of sauce and all the good stuff? These ones certainly don't. They hold together under the stress of the biggest Aussie hamburger, let alone the 'I can haz cheezburger' lolcat crap from the multinational chains.


So enough telling you how goooood these are. Let's make 'em!


Here's the ingredients:

• 200 ml luke warm milk
• 30 grams unsalted butter (you can use margarine or olive-oil based spread if you like)
• 1 egg (small is OK, large is better, jumbo free range is best)
• 450 grams plain flour
• 30 grams castor sugar (more or less, depending on your taste)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 Packs of Tandaco dry yeast
• An egg yolk
• Sesame seeds

I use my trusty Braun Combimax because I'm a lazy guy and the instructions are based on using machinery. If you're one of the keen folk who like to do it by hand, then adapt the instructions to your method.


Here's what to do with the ingredients:

• Put the flour and butter into the Combimax and run it on the lowest speed for around one minute or until they're well combined.
• After that, add the salt, sugar and yeast allowing them to combine well for around one minute.
• Break the egg into the Combimax's chamber while it's still running. You may need to increase the speed to three so that the dry mix forms into crumbly little pieces. After that, increase the speed to six.
• Slowly add the milk as with other recipes in this blog until a good dough ball forms, then add just a touch more. You probably won't need to use all the milk. However, it depends on the flour you're using. Adjust the amount as you see fit.
• Roll the dough into a ball with olive oil lightly spread all over it in a bowl.
• Cover and allow to rise for around one hour to one and a half hours. It should more than double in size.
• Punch the dough down.
• Gently knead the dough, adding any whole grains or other additions you would like in the bread.
• Form the dough into a long cylinder and cut into eight equal sized pieces.
• Flatten the pieces to about half of the height of what would would like the finished buns to be.
• Allow to rise again, covered in a warm place, for about 30 - 45 minutes. Longer rising makes for fluffier buns.
• Preheat the over to 180C fan forced.
• Lightly beat the extra egg yolk with a teaspoon of water and brush onto the risen buns. This will make them brown to look like the buns you see in burger joint advertising but rarely, if ever, get when you buy.
• Decorate with sesame seeds for that authentic burger look.
• Bake for around 12 minutes.
• Switch your oven to either fan forced grill mode or switch to grill mode until the top baking tray of buns is browned to your liking. Move the bottom tray up to where the top tray was and repeat the browning procedure. Careful you don't put the buns too close to a non-fan forced grill else you will burn them instead of browning.
• Place the buns on a cooling rack.
• Ready to eat after about fifteen to twenty minutes.

As with all of my recipes, there are only limited preservatives used - small amounts of salt and sugar. These buns are best on the day they are baked and will become stale quite quickly. After day two, they make great toast, pain perdue, French toast or whatever it is you like to do with less-then-fresh bread. After day five they make great king-sized hockey pucks for you Canuck readers!


Happy Baking!!


PS - On Saturday 11 April 2009 I'm going to show you how to make Hot Cross Buns for Easter Sunday morning (12 April 2009). Guys - this is a way to win huge brownie points with your SWMBO especially with the prices they're charging for Hot Cross Buns this year! You're going to need some brown sugar, icing sugar and mixed peel as well as your usual baking ingredients. Oh - and butter - real butter because nothing else tastes better than oven fresh Hot Cross Buns with butter. Fresh from the oven they taste and smell awesome!