Once & Future Home

These hotdog/hamburger buns are a lot like store-bought – in a good way. I adapted this recipe from Bonnie’s 30 Minute recipe at justapinch.com, against her admonishment not to change things up. She uses bread flour, a real egg, a smidge more sugar, and butter. I’m sure hers are great – we just strive to use whole wheat flour when we can, so we adapted accordingly.

These freeze well, so I make half hotdog and half hamburger, and save whichever we’re not using that night for later use.

Egg-Free Whole Wheat Hotdog/Hamburger Buns

Ingredients

• 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons warm water (110 degrees)
  
• 1/3 cup canola oil
  
• 3 tablespoons sugar or honey
  
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 flax egg (instructions below)
  
• 1 1/3 cups bread or all-purpose flour
  
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
  
• 1 pat of real butter or about a tablespoon of olive oil
  

Instructions

1. Make your flax egg. Combine 1 tablespoon ground flax seed (I grind mine in my food processor) with three tablespoons water. (If you’re curious about flax eggs, check out this great intro from Bonzai Aphrodite). Stir to combine and put in the fridge. (Do this step firs: you need your flax egg to set up).
2. Add warm water, oil, sugar and yeast to a large bowl. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, measure your flours and add the one teaspoon of salt. Mix well.
4. After the 15 minutes is up, mix in flax egg and flour a little at a time to the yeast mixture until you have a dough you can roll. It’s a nice tender dough – pretty light. Not sticky.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board. Roll to about 3/4 inch thick and cut out with a 4 inch glass or a clean can. Transfer the cut out dough to your cookie sheet. If you want hotdog buns, turn the sides down and under to overlap and lay on the parchment paper. If you want hamburger buns, use the entire circle and place it on the parchment paper.
6. Brush tops of buns with the melted butter or oil. NB – I used butter, but if you want to vegan it up, go with oil.
7. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
8. Let buns rise in a warm place for about ten minutes. Then bake buns about 10 minutes, or until tops are golden brown.

These are good when you’re striving for the classics – like these spicy hotdogs and slaw. 

Enjoy!