Homemade Hamburger Buns

This recipes uses regular bread dough for the hamburger buns (which has no dairy in it by the way). Regular bread recipe can be found here. Whether you are using a mixer or kneading by hand, take about half the dough (the amount you'd use for two loaves of bread) and instead of placing in bread pans, shape into buns. Let rise for an hour on greased cookie sheets.



Bake for approximately 30 minutes at 350. If you bake a sheet on each oven rack, check to make sure the ones on the lower rack are not burning on the bottom. Let cool.


After cooling, slice and wrap individually in saran wrap. Then put in freezer bags and freeze until use. I have found through trial and error that double wrapping before freezing insures soft, delicious bread or buns after thawing.

Bread Recipe

As requested, here is the bread recipe I use with my wheat grinder and Bosch mixer. It is from Denise at the country baker, though the recipe that is linked is slightly different than the one I use. She must have updated it! I'll have to give that one a try, though we love our current one.

Grind 12 cups of Prairie Gold wheat (or whichever wheat berries you prefer - just be sure they are hard wheat berries as opposed to soft wheat, which does not require yeast and is used for quick breads and desserts). My wheat grinder will only grind 8 cups at once, so I have to grind twice. Of course you can use store bought whole wheat flour in this recipe if you don't have a wheat grinder.

In Bosch mixer (or very large bowl, if you don't have a mixer) pour 5 cups of warm water. Then add in this order:

1 1/4 cup oil (I use EVOO)
1 cup honey
8 cups flour
5 tsp salt (I use sea salt)
1 T lecithin granules (optional - this acts as a natural preservative and adds freshness)
1 T dough enhancer (optional - this helps give it a nice texture but I have left it out and the bread still turns out great)
2 1/2 T SAF yeast (this is professional baking yeast, not the kind in the little yellow packets at your local grocery store)

Turn mixer on (or stir thoroughly if not using a mixer) and watch for ingredients to be well mixed. Add 1 cup of flax seeds (optional). Gradually add 3-4 additional cups of flour until dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and the sides of the bowl look "clean". When this happens, set a timer for 4 minutes and let the mixer knead the dough for that amount of time. If you are kneading by hand, turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead for 20 minutes. When time is up, pour dough onto countertop and form into long roll. Cut roll into fourths and put each fourth into a greased bread pan. Pinch the sides down so that the center will bake into a slightly rounded top. This looks so nice when baking is done! Set aside and let rise for one hour. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

One additional reason I love this bread is that it contains no dairy products, so it can be eaten by our little friend Micah whom we babysit a couple times a month and who has a severe dairy allergy. My husband, who is lactose intolerant, can also eat it with no ill effects.

Baking Bread

Several people have asked me how I bake our bread, so I thought I would devote a post to that subject.

After receiving a bread machine from my in-laws the Christmas that I was pregnant with our oldest, I immediately began using it to bake all our bread. My husband and I loved the flavor, texture, and the smell of the bread while it was baking! The downside was that it took 4 1/2 hours per loaf, but since we only needed one or two loaves per week, it wasn't too bad. A couple of children later, I couldn't keep up. I was constantly baking. And then I switched to whole wheat flour and I could almost smell the poor bread machine motor beginning to burn up from the effort. We completely ruined our "paddle".

So I put my beloved bread machine away and we ate store bought bread for a time while I researched bread-from-scratch recipes and did some soul searching to make sure this was a road I was committed to travel. Ultimately, I became convinced of the health benefits of freshly ground whole wheat flour, so we purchased this wheat grinder and a few pounds of wheat berries and I started grinding my own wheat to make flour and then mixing and kneading bread dough by hand (when we purchased ours it was right around $200, I see that it has gone up in price since then).



With my grain mill I could grind wheat into flour, mix it into bread dough immediately for the best health benefits, then knead and bake 4 or 5 loaves at once. It took me about 20 minutes to knead by hand, but I could have 4 or 5 loaves in about 3 hours total, as opposed to one loaf in 4 1/2 hours in my bread machine. We loved this bread even more! It is soft, delicious whole wheat bread, especially when fresh. Not heavy at all. I baked bread this way, kneading by hand, for another 2 or 3 years while saving money for a Bosch mixer.


I love my Bosch mixer! It is designed for daily use and for mixing whole wheat bread dough. In other words, it has a very powerful motor. I can use it for mixing just about any kind of dough or batter (including cookies), and I have the option of purchasing special attachments such as the one that makes cereal flakes! (the mixer pictured in the link is an updated model of the one I own). This mixer takes the place of my hand kneading, so it cuts the total time even further. In this picture the dough is nearing the end of its mixing time and pretty much fills the whole bowl.


The recipe I use usually yields 4 loaves, but this time I used part of the dough to make a stuffed sandwich so I only got 3 loaves of bread. Here it is starting its one hour rise time.


After rising for an hour, I bake at 350 for 30 minutes. And voila! Yummy homemade bread!


I let mine cool completely and then cut immediately into slices, wrap in saran wrap and specially sized bread bags, and freeze for use during the week. If I slice, wrap and freeze right away, later when we thaw a loaf it tastes just-made-fresh! I have learned through trial and error that double wrapping is important if I plan to freeze the loaves. This bread is wonderful sandwich and toast bread! I use the same recipe to make hamburger buns, but change it a little to make pizza crust.

Once the equipment is paid for, this is not only healthy bread but very inexpensive bread too! A 50# bag of wheat berries costs $27.50. From this I can bake 80 loaves of bread. Factoring in the other ingredients makes homemade bread slightly more than 34 cents per loaf, but still much cheaper than its store bought cousins! This is a tremendous savings for us right now, during my husband's unemployment. On many occasions I have found myself giving thanks for the bag of wheat berries in our basement!

For an interesting article on the fiber benefits of freshly ground whole grain flour, go here. And here is another one on the wheat germ properties of bread made from freshly ground flour, which can help ward off the common cold (maybe I haven't been eating enough bread the last couple weeks!).

Stuffed Sandwich

Some people have asked me how to make the stuffed sandwiches that I mention from time to time. So here are picture directions for making one! This recipe is not an original. I got it from the country baker. Though my baking utensils are not essential to making this recipe, I purchased those from the country baker also, as well as my Bosch mixer which kneads the dough for me. Start with a chunk of bread dough, about the size you would use to bake a loaf of bread. This should be yeast bread dough before any rising has occurred. Roll it out to about 1/3" thickness in the shape of a rectangle. Because you are rolling it so thin, it doesn't need to rise before baking. You should bake immediately after making. The dots you see on my bread dough are flax seeds, which are not essential to this recipe but just something I like to add to my bread. Mentally divide this rectangle into thirds. The middle third will hold the food, and the outer two thirds (one third on each side) will become the faux braid. Using a knife, or this dough cutter scraper, cut slits about one inch apart and slightly on a diagonal all the way down both sides of your dough rectangle.

Then spread some type of pesto or mustard or whatever type of sauce you'd like to experiment with down the middle third. It's been fun for us to experiment with different spreads!

Now you are ready to layer your meat and cheese. I would normally layer the meat pretty thick, but this time I had frozen an amount that I thought would be sufficient and it turned out to be pretty slim. Oh well. Good thing the bread is good all by itself!!

I have also put precooked veggies such as peppers and onions inside, and my husband and I like this flavor but our children don't.

Once you have all the "stuffing" layered down the middle third, take the outer strips and begin laying them across the middle, crossing the ends over each other to look like a braid. Crimp each end closed so the stuffing doesn't come out while baking!

When you are finished, you'll have something that looks like this:


Now comes the tricky part. Transferring this yummy looking sandwich to a baking sheet. I have a large bread dough spatula (in picture) that I purchased from the country baker, however it no longer appears on their website. Before purchasing this handy tool, which also works well for homemade pizza by the way!, I used two regular sized spatulas, the kind you use to remove cookies from a tray.


Once the stuffed sandwich has been transferred to your baking sheet, whisk one raw egg with a bit of water and then brush this over your sandwich.

Sprinkle with poppy seeds.....

.....bake at 350 for 30 minutes, and enjoy!