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Hamburger Buns: Tips & Techniques


loladrian

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I would love to make home-made mini hamburger buns and I cannot seem to get it right! Every time I try, they come out too dense and heavy. I want light, airy ones you can squish. Any good recipes out there? Or tips for that matter?

Thanks in advance!

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I use a simple bread recipe:

Flour 100% ie 300g

salt 2% of Flour weight ie 6g

yeast 3% ie 9g

water 60% ie 180ml

here is how I would make your buns.

make the dough, knead for 10 mins (important, you need to develop the gluten, the gluten catches the CO2 from the yeast)

Put the dough in a bowl, and cover with cling film and let is rise so it doubles in volume. I used to put my dough in a bowl with measuring marks, and note where it came up to. Then when 350ml of dough rose to 700ml, I knew it was double.

Knock back the dough, knead it a bit.

Scale off the dough and make little balls for your buns. Lay them out on your baking tray and put them in an oven that been tuned on for 2 or 3 mins (just enough to get luke warm) and put a tray of hot water in the bottom. You want a nice humid oven, you don't wan't the buns to get an elephant skin on them. Let them rise twice in volume again.

pull them out an turn your oven on to a good hot temperature, then when its hot, cook your buns. You'll know they are done, when you tap them and they sound hollow...

let us know how you get on!

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I was thinking of making my own buns, too, since the ones I can buy all have weird ingredients in them. You might want to check out Moomie's "famous" hamburger bun recipe available at the King Arthur site.

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I like to make potato rolls, which are similar to nickgrieve's rolls but with, surprise, the addition of a potato which nicely tenderizes the rolls (but not too much). You get a slightly chewy roll that is pleasantly soft but firm enough to handle a well-topped burger easily.

1 large potato, mashed

3 1/2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour

3/4 cup water

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 teaspoons salt

Put all ingredients together (making sure the potato is very well mashed--I use a ricer) and knead for about 10 minutes.

Set well-kneaded dough in a greased bowl for about 90 minutes or until roughly doubled in size (in the summer I usually start checking in at 60 then periodically thereafter).

After they've doubled, I cut them into a uniform size depending on how big I want them to be then gently degas so that the rolls won't have any huge cavernous holes in them, but I don't want to get rid of all of it, just so that it's uniform. Then I shape them like little boules and let them rise for about 60 minutes. Then I bake them in a 400F oven directly on my stone for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are browned to my liking.

The more hydration, the bigger and more irregular the holes in the crumb will be so you could add up to a 1/4 cup more.

These are my favorite for burgers. NB: If you're using active dry yeast, you should use a little less than double the instant.

josh

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I was thinking of making my own buns, too, since the ones I can buy all have weird ingredients in them. You might want to check out Moomie's "famous" hamburger bun recipe available at the King Arthur site.

thank you mukki, i actually did try this recipe a while ago and it produced (with my hands!) ok buns, but not the squishy, lightness I am looking for.

saucée, what a great idea! I should of thought of that (I guess that is what forums are for). I love potato rolls, I will give them a shot. I was going to yesterday, but I was too busy making pate de fruit...

To be honest, I will probably not get to these until early next week, but I promise to report back. Thanks for all of your help.

Edited by loladrian (log)
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I was thinking of making my own buns, too, since the ones I can buy all have weird ingredients in them. You might want to check out Moomie's "famous" hamburger bun recipe available at the King Arthur site.

thank you mukki, i actually did try this recipe a while ago and it produced (with my hands!) ok buns, but not the squishy, lightness I am looking for.

Ah, well, good to know.

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... ok buns, but not the squishy, lightness I am looking for.

...

Use milk instead of some of the water for added pappiness.

A stronger flour would give you more lift. (And possibly more rise time would help too - do it to the dough's timetable, not by the clock!)

Normally, you would want a crispish crust. But probably not for burger rolls. So *don't* cool them on a rack (to dry the crust), instead retain the buns' steam - let them cool in some sort of enclosure (bag? spare biscuit/cookie tin?) or at least with a damp cloth over them.

And a hotter oven (and shorter bake) should give you a thinner crust.

Likely plenty of humidity in the oven would do no harm either...

Experiment and enjoy!

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

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I can see that the smaller the bun, the larger the surface area so a tougher bun becomes more obvious!

Can’t help but notice you’re listed as being in Paris – so what flour are you using? One of the problems I’ve had with supermarket flour is that they are low gluten (even flour labelled T55). Reducing the hydration of the dough is unsatisfactory as it still produces a cake-like crumb and tends to give a heavier loaf.

I found that Farine Blanche Bloem from Groupe Casino is one of the best, but it really needs ascorbic acid to bring it up to suitable bread making strength. Hopefully you have access to some imported bread flour.

For the ‘real thing’ hamburger buns typically have a fat added to them to make them more tender (soft); around 5% of the weight of flour is good (unsalted butter adds a fine taste). Some recipes add sugar, egg and/or up to 50% of liquid as milk – all of these add to tenderise the crumb but there is no consistency across different recipes.

There is a world of difference in the approach to fermentation. If you are adding butter, there is no benefit from having a long slow fermentation and there are a number of recipes that rest the dough for no longer than 10 minutes after mixing, and move directly on to dividing and making up the bun shapes. This is good for speed, but does shorten the shelf life to no more than a couple of days (but being a soft roll, the buns freeze really well).

Yeast tends to be higher than usual bread recipes – around 1.5-2% of flour weight is OK if you are using dried yeast.

With a high level of yeast and using warmish water, proofing takes only 30-45 minutes.

To keep the buns soft, you might try brushing the top of the buns with melted butter when they come out of the oven.

If you’re going to top with sesame seeds do it at the start of proofing, not at the end.

edited for clarity

Edited by Baggy (log)
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Baggy- thank you so much for all the information. As for flour, I am using T65 (an organic one-I have no idea if that makes a difference) and it works well for cookies, muffins, etc. But this is my first attempt at buns here in Paris, so I will look for the flour you recommended.

Ok, I need fat content to get the softness I am seeking. Would you recommend going more in the direction of brioche? Or is that too much fat? Could I just add butter to the potato roll recipe, or does that change everything? --knowing the chemistry involved in yeast/dough, I am guessing that would be a flop.

I am thinking of going the brioche route, although I will give the potato roll a shot too. I am just hesitant the brioche will be too rich, and the potato not fluffy enough. thoughts?

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If you want a fluffy american-style hamburger bun like most people would buy at the grocery store, I would suggest pain de mie rather than brioche. With all the enrichments, it will be very very tender.

You could do 64% milk, 1 egg, about 10.5% butter for the enrichments.

I personally don't like this kind of roll because it tends to fall apart with the addition of copious toppings but if you want the kind of bun that's marketed in supermarkets in the states, this is the one.

The potato roll is good on its own with a bit of butter as a dinner roll--I like to eat bread that I would actually eat on its own and I wouldn't eat the whitebread roll on its own. But that's just me. The potato roll won't be as soft as the whitebread roll, but I think its got the right balance of tenderness and texture.

The brioche would certainly work (and it would be delicious), but it might be a shame to use that luxurious bread on a hamburger where its richness is going to be overshadowed by the beef.

josh

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lladrian, I have tried using organic T65 from Leader Price and found it had a disappointing taste and was very difficult to get any volume in my breads. If your flour is anything similar, then I suspect that the flour is the main reason for your lack of success. Weaker flours are perfect for cakes and cookies, but the death of a decent loaf, giving a dense, damp-feeling crumb.

You should have noticeably better results with the Groupe Casino T55, but if you can find some imported US or UK flour this is a far better solution (or go and beg a couple of kilos of T55 bread flour from your local baker – legally he can only charge you wholesale price, so you may have to buy an expensive gâteau to show him how happy you are; I always get my flour this way when visiting France).

Hamburger buns have lots of different variants and the best for you has to be whatever is your personal favourite. For me, a typical brioche based dough has too much sugar for a hamburger (fine for foie gras) and has much higher levels of butter and egg (upwards of 20% of the flour weight of added butter). This can make brioche a really difficult (and time consuming) bread to make. You could try the approach suggested by saucée, although with 10% butter and egg it might be richer than you’re used to, especially using a more mild French rather than the stronger US or UK flour. [but I may have misinterpreted the quantities suggested – I assume that they are flour based ratios.]

Can’t really help with the potato roll as I’m not familiar with it. Give me some hint and I can give you a view. In any case, it sounds like a fun alternative.

What are you planning to use for the patty?

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Sorry my post was a bit unclear; the ratios above are flour based. I thought this might be easier than giving measurements in ounces, pounds, etc..

I googled for a pain de mie recipe and came up with this. It's got a very similar profile to what I had in my last post, just without the egg. You might try making rolls out of this recipe if you want an approximation of mass-produced American rolls.

As for the potato rolls, I make them with an AP flour that has around 10% gluten. I would think they would work well with slightly weaker flours as well.

josh

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you are clearly talented bakers! I appreciate your help so much....

saucée- I agree with you that what I do not want is a bun that is dry and will fall apart with the delicious things my co-conspirator has in mind for using on the burger. And I think my hesitation for the brioche route have been confirmed by you... It would be very nice for fois, salmon etc., but we will be using beef. Your potato roll is on my first-thing-to-do-tomorrow list. (we had company last night so dishes were key today!).

baggy- great idea (getting flour from the baker)! It is so funny moving here, and realizing all of the wonderful things you can get from your baker. I never thought of getting flour there. I know they are happy to sell you the dough, because you pay by the weight of 'prix du pain' without the hassle of baking it. I will wink, smile and buy that a couple of things I have been drooling over... We are using a beef patty (with a little pork mixed in, because french beef is much leaner than american beef, and we are looking for an american style hamburger albeit a good one) some chopped onion and topped with pickled tomato, caramelized onions and blue cheese.

So I will give the potato roll a try with some better flour and hope to report good news tomorrow.

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Now everything is looking good for the perfect hamburger bun (and hamburger)! I’m looking forward to hearing about the next episode – I’m sure there’s going to be a good story from your conversation with the baker. Maybe it would be prudent not to mention the particular purpose for getting hold of the flour…

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Check out the Baking Circle thread over at King Arthur Flour.

There is a member there with a bun recipe, known as Moomie.

Moomie's Buns enjoy a cult status at King Arthur. You can get them from the member's recipe's section.

I, myself, have not made them, but personally, I would highly recommend trying them.

I like to bake nice things. And then I eat them. Then I can bake some more.

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I am not sure if anyone will read this in time, but I just made the potato roll dough and it was extremely sticky!! So sticky I couldn't knead it very well. I added some flour to be able to knead it, but now I am worried I either added too much flour, or did something terribly wrong. I am letting it rise now, because I figure I may as well, but something tells me I did something wrong?

I used flour especially for bread making purchased at the store... but I couldn't find the farine bloem Baggy suggested or imported flour today.

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The extra starch from the potato might make it a bit sticky, but adding flour isn't problematic in itself--how much did you add? I like to add it in pinches until I can handle it and go from there.

This dough does tend to be a bit finicky in my experience; having to tweak it in order to handle it is par for the course, I think. So don't worry, it should work out.

As long as you've kneaded it properly and let it rise properly, it'll be good. A fresh homebaked roll is always appreciated.

josh

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Loladrian I looked for a long time to find the right recipe for hamburger buns. So far this is the best one I've found.

Rosemary Potato Buns

I've made these a number of times now. Sometimes I use the rosemary and other times I leave it out. You can shape the dough for burgers or hot dogs and it makes a great loaf. I added sage and lots of black pepper and used the loaf to make a stuffing for chicken.

Ann

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you are lifesavers...

Saucee- I added about an extra 1/4 c flour, but i didn't measure it, i just kept adding more until i got a texture that was suitable for kneading. They are on the rise now, so I have my fingers crossed.

Ann_T- If these don't work, I will try the linked recipe! Thanks!! And I love the idea of sage and black pepper. yum.

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Don't worry about having to adjust these bread formulas--ambient climate, the properties of the flour, the whims of the gods, etc., all come into play when making dough. The first time you make a certain kind of dough there's always a bit of trepidation that comes with the new territory you're in, but if you follow your instincts, as you seem to have done here, it'll more than likely turn out alright.

good luck

josh

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Loladrian I looked for a long time to find the right recipe for hamburger buns.  So far this is the best one I've found. 

Rosemary Potato Buns

I've made these a number of times now.  Sometimes I use the rosemary and other times I leave it out.  You can shape the dough for burgers or hot dogs and it makes a great loaf.  I added sage and lots of black pepper and used the loaf to make a stuffing for chicken. 

Ann

That does look good--it looks like it would turn out pretty herbal and flavorful. I bet they would be good sandwich rolls too...

Thanks for the reference Ann_T.

josh

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Inspired by the thought of eating hamburgers in Paris I tried two recipes today for hamburger buns – one from Jeffrey Hamelman and the other from France, Laurent Morel.

Frankly, it was a close call. The Hamelman buns (made with UK bread flour) were marginally lighter and drier after toasting, with a strong buttery flavour. The Morel buns (made with T55 flour) have a more subtle taste and were just a touch chewy.

Taste tested under real eating conditions with twice ground chuck steak (no other additives), the French buns just won by a short head.

The Hamelman recipe is fairly similar to the recipe proposed by Moomie on Baking Circle, with high sugar, butter and added egg; the Morel recipe has a touch of sugar, no egg and moderate amounts of butter. The Hamelman buns came out darker, looking more interesting.

Once again, personal taste was the arbiter, not the recipe.

But I’m intrigued by the potato roll. My experience of unworkable, sticky potatoes is associated with using salad or new potatoes – when making gnocchi, a floury potato is the only one that works. This time of year, all the old potatoes have gone so this may be the root of your current problem.

If you have time, it might be worth making a standard loaf with the flour you have. Just add 60-63% water, 2% salt and 2% fresh yeast (or 0.82% rapid, instant yeast). If you have success, then you can be assured that your basic ingredients are up to scratch.

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