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Homemade Hamburger Buns: Easier Than You Think, Tastier Than You Buy

Steven John
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homemade hamburger buns
Flickr User Tim Sackton

There’s nothing like homemade food, especially when it’s a home-cooked meal that’s genuinely made from scratch. When a cook starts with nothing but raw ingredients and ends with a sumptuous and entirely original feast, the diners (AKA friends and family) are in for a treat. This is all the more true when dealing with grilled foods, as grilling allows a home chef to add their own unique blends of spices and marinades, to use smoke or rubs, to cook slowly and steadily over low heat or to quickly sear on a blazing barbecue.

You probably have your own preferred way to create, season, and prepare hamburger patties and I’ll wager you have your own preferred cheese pairings, condiment blends, and selection of toppings, but when it comes to the bun, if you’re like most people, you settle for a few blasé store-bought option. (Or maybe you saw my article on a few great hamburger bun options that add more flavor and character?) What if I told you that making hamburger buns from scratch is easy, satisfying, and delicious? Let’s find out…

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Making hamburger buns from scratch is easy, satisfying, and delicious. Now that we have that cleared up, here’s how to make hamburger buns at home using nothing more than…

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Homemade Hamburger Bun

Steven John

Ingredients:

  • 3 Cups Flour (I use all-purpose; whole wheat is fine too)
  • .5 Cup Lukewarm Water
  • .5 Cup Lukewarm Milk
  • 1 Tbsp Dry Yeast (a Heaping Tablespoon)
  • 1 Egg, plus one Egg White (or two very small eggs—set aside about a tbsp of egg)
  • 1 Tsp Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Sugar
  • 3 Tbsp Melted Butter (or a butter substitute, or 2 tbsp oil —but not olive oil!)

Method:

  1. Combine water, milk, and yeast and stir gently, then rest the blend for about five minutes.
  2. Stir the sugar, salt, egg, and flour into the yeast/liquid blend, in that order, and blend well.
  3. Knead the dough (yep, it’s dough now!) for about five minutes, then cover the mixing bowl and set it aside for an hour, ideally in a rather warm part of the house. (I often rest my dough bowl on top of the hot water heater).
  4. Pre-heat the oven to 375, then punch the dough back down before you divide the mixture into eight balls; shape those balls into discs.
  5. Brush the tops of the discs with a bit of that reserved egg.
  6. Bake your dough discs for 15 minutes, then let ’em cool. Slice and serve.

Making Your Homemade Hamburger Buns Awesome

So there you have it, folks: a super simple recipe that makes satisfying burger buns.

But if you want to make your homemade buns next level awesome, you need to spice things up. You can use that brushed on egg to coat the top of your buns in classic sesame seeds, in sea salt, with cracked pepper, or with any other seasoning you want. But where things get extra tasty is through blended in herbs and spices.

You can mix rosemary or thyme into the dough, or bake in red pepper flakes for extra kick. Add shavings of cheeses (hard cheese work great; softer ones are fine too, just go easy). Add fresh, finely chopped chives. Add anything that sounds excellent to you; worst case scenario, you wasted about three dollars worth of ingredients. Best case scenario, you create an entirely original bun recipe that lives up to your legendary burgers.

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Steven John
Steven John
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steven John is a writer and journalist living just outside New York City, by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, by way of…
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