Last summer my daughter went to a day camp at our local culinary school. It was a great camp! The kids made everything for their lunches from scratch, from fresh pasta, to veggie burgers with their buns, and usually had a treat to bring home at the end of the day including a delicious lemon meringue pie. At the end of the week, she had a folder of the recipes she made that week to bring home and make at home. There was one problem… whoever typed up the recipes made several errors! For instance the lemon meringue pie had both 1/3 cup of flour and 1/3 cup of cornstarch in it. I thought that looked wrong, but my daughter wanted to follow the recipe … Just as I suspected the filling came out like cement!
When we tried the buns, they forgot to include the oven temperature, so I had to do some guess work based on other breads I had made. The buns were quick to put together (no rising time whatsoever) and turned out well, but there was a lot of yeast in them and we thought the taste of the yeast overpowered the burger. I generally prefer to make my breads with less yeast and give them a longer rise because I think they have better flavour that way.
Since I am doing lots of baking, I decided to try to hone the recipe to see if I could make a good tasting burger bun with less yeast. They also had quite a bit of sugar in the recipe, so I wanted to reduce that. First I tried 1/2 tsp of yeast but even after 3 hours of rising, the dough didn’t rise enough and the buns were too small. I tried this a couple of times with varying rise times, but the result was the same. I think with an overnight rise, it would have worked, but I wanted a bun that you could make all in the same day. I upped the yeast amount to 1 tsp and that worked perfectly. I also gave the dough two rises, one bulk rise until doubled in size and then a shorter rise after I divided the dough and formed each piece into disk shapes. The buns rose really well in the oven and had a perfect shape. I also added an egg wash on top of the buns for shine and sprinkled them with some sesame seeds.
There is a bit of rising time, but the total active time is only about 10-15 minutes, so they’re very easy to make. We liked the taste better than store-bought and the buns didn’t fall apart as some store-bought buns often do.
I use a digital kitchen scale to weigh my pieces of dough when dividing to ensure that all the pieces are the same size. For this recipe, my pieces ended up being around 80g each.
Hope you enjoy the reicpe! I’d love to read your comments if you try it 🙂
Easy Burger Buns
This easy burger bun recipe takes very little work to make and are absolutely delicious! Top them with sesame seeds or keep them plain!
Ingredients
Instructions
- Meanwhile, in large bowl, whisk together flour and salt.
- Add yeast, sugar, egg, oil and water.
- Stir yeast mixture into flour and mix to combine into a shaggy dough.
- Knead dough until smooth and elastic, about about 10 minutes.
- Place dough in a large greased bowl. Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
- Divide dough into 8 equal portions. A digital scale can help to make accurate, equal portions of about 84-85 grams each.
- Form each piece into balls, by stretching the top of the dough around the sides and under the bottom. Using cupped hands, pull the dough in circles to create a strong surface tension. This will ensure smooth bun tops.
- Using the palm of your hand, flatten each round into a uniform disk shape.
- Place on lined baking sheet. Spray the tops of your disks lightly with vegetable oil spray, cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 425F.
- After buns have risen, brush the tops with egg wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds if you wish.
- Bake for 8-12 minutes until golden brown on top.
- Let cool completely on pan.
- Best if served same day as cooking, or you can slice the buns horizontally and keep them in the freezer.
In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together water, yeast, sugar and vegetable oil. Let stand about until yeast foams on top, about 5 minutes.
Whisk egg into yeast mixture.
Stir yeast mixture into flour.
Mix to combine into a shaggy dough. Dough should be slightly sticky, not dry.
Knead for 4-6 minutes until smooth and elastic.
Let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Divide dough into 8 equal portions
Form dough each portion into a ball, tucking the sides underneath. Then with cupped hands, pull the dough in circular motions to form a taut surface.
Dough ball with taut surface.
Flatten the each dough ball with the palm of your hand.
Shape into uniform disks.
Place on lined baking sheet. Spray the surface of each round lightly with vegetable oil spray.
Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Before baking, brush tops of buns with egg wash.
Optional: sprinkle tops with sesame seeds.
Bake until tops are golden brown, 8-12 minutes.
They look delicious Margot. Will definitely try this recipe this summer, hold the sesame seeds please!
[…] we like these burgers so much that I wanted to share them with you. They are also fantastic on my Easy Burger Buns. We eat vegetarian a few times a week and I find that I’m my most creative when coming up […]