Homemade Buns

* Pamela *'s Note:

I attend a mom's group at my church and one Tuesday morning our "craft" was making buns. The experienced bun makers of the previous generation taught all of us young moms the craft of bun making. Now I am proud of my bun making and I am glad that I had a chance to acquire this new skill. (Thank you Mavis!) Prep time does not include rising time. Sometimes I will make a big batch of this recipe and then make breadsticks, hoagie rolls, small buns for kid's lunches, and even a batch of cinnamon rolls but adding cinnamon and sugar and rolling up the dough. All of these can be tucked into the freezer until you need them.

• Total Time: 25 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 60 buns

Yeast

• 2 tablespoons yeast
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup water

Add

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
• 4 cups water
• 1 cup oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar
• 13 -15 cups flour (white, whole wheat or a mix of each)
• 1/2 cup wheat germ (optional)

Directions:

1. Mix Yeast items and let stand in a large bowl (I like my tupperware thatsa bowl!).
2. Knead out until dough is soft and does not stick to your hands.
3. Cover and let rise 45 minutes.
4. Punch down and let rise 30 minutes.
5. Shape into buns and let rise for 2 hours.
6. Bake at 375 for 15-17 minutes or until golden brown.

Reviews

[BeachGirl]

OUTSTANDING - excellent flavor. These deserve more than 5 stars!!! Light textured buns, even made with 1/2 whole wheat flour! Since there were no assembling instructions, here's what I did. After step 1, I added salt, sugar, vinegar, wheat germ, and oil to yeast mixture, and mixed 30 seconds. Added oil and mixed 30 seconds. I then added half unbleached flour and mixed to form a soft dough. Then added the remaining flour (whole wheat) one cup at a time, until the dough was stiff. I skipped step 2. Sprayed mixing bowl with Pamcovered with plastic srap, and let dough rise as instructed in step 3. Continued with rising and baking instructions as listed. They were fabulous! I rolled out dough to about 3/4" thickness and cut 24 3-inch rounds. After rising, half the recipe made 24 light 3-1/2" diameter buns 1-3/4" tall. As soon as a friend make me the larger cutter, I can make those X-large hamburger buns in healthy whole wheat. I am pleased to add this recipe to my permanent cookbook. I may never buy hamburger buns again!

[~cbw~]

These turned out pretty good! I made a few changes in preparation, but kept the ingredients the same(I didn't use wheat germ and I used half wheat flour, half white). First I scaled the recipe back to only make 10 buns (instead of 60) and made it in my bread machine. I added the yeast ingredients in the pan first, stirred it together and let it sit for about 1-2 minutes. Then I just dumped the rest in(liquid first, then dry) and set it on the 'dough setting'. As soon as it was done in the ABM, I shaped it into buns and let them rise for the 2 hours. I will definitely make these again! Using the bread machine made them so easy and the taste was good too! Thanks for posting Pamela!

[RubberDucky AU]

I used this to make Pizza Rollups today. It was great. I found myself wishing I'd made some buns as well just to see how they came out, but the pizza rollup bread was very light, fluffy, just how we like it. As decent bread rolls are like hens teeth here in Fiji, I will be using this recipe often. Thanks Pamela.