Hamburger Buns

This recipe comes from allrecipes.com. I love that website, if anyone hasn't noticed! I wanted to make some hamburger buns so Jeff and I could do a day-late Memorial Day celebration with burgers, maybe some homemade fries, just all-American Memorial Day fare. Then Jeff came home from work and said he'd had hamburgers for lunch. And we ended up having to go to my parents' house to do some laundry. I had already made the buns, so we took them with us. Mom had been planning on making sloppy joes for dinner, so we had her homemade sloppy joe meat on my homemade buns. It was terrific! Happy Day-Late Memorial Day!
Tasty Buns
5 cups all-purpose flour (you can substitute some whole wheat flour here. I used 1 cup whole wheat)
2 (.25 ounce) packages dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp. total)
1 cup milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Stir together 2 cups flour and the yeast. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, oil, sugar and salt to lukewarm in microwave. Add all at once to the flour mixture, and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes (according to the reviews of this recipe, the 3 minutes is important. A lot of people commented that the buns are hard or dense, and have a yeasty flavor. But if you beat the dough long enough here, they turn our rather soft and un-yeasty).

Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, 2 to 3 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for about 10 minutes. Note here the absence of kneading or rising - this is such a great recipe!

Shape dough into 12 slightly flat balls, and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.

Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Mom ended up having to go to class, so she wasn't able to have dinner with us. When she got home, there was very little sloppy joe meat left, so she cooked up a hamburger patty and topped it with the leftover sloppy joe meat. She let me commandeer her burger temporarily for some pictures, but after six or seven shots she said that was enough and demanded her dinner back. She said the bun was really good - but I already knew that!
This recipe makes soft, delicious buns, perfect for hamburgers or sloppy joes. You could also shape it into hot dog buns. On it's own, the bread is somewhat bland, but when was the last time you ever ate a flavorful hamburger bun? The texture is great, and the recipe is really easy to make. No kneading, only one rise, this dough takes much less time to make than a traditional yeast bread. This is one I'll definitely be making again!