Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns

Anyone who knows me & my husband knows that we love bread. We don't just love to eat it, though, we love to make it! While we don't claim to be experts, and we're always looking for shortcuts, we've made quite a few loaves.

A few months ago, we asked to borrow my mom's bread machine. (See, I said we liked shortcuts!) We've really loved using it, and one of our favorites from the bread machine is hamburger buns. How do you make hamburger buns in the bread machine, you ask? Good question! My aunt (who I've mentioned before & invented this amazing candy recipe) sent me a recipe. Using her suggestions & tweaking it a little myself, here it is:

Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns - in the bread machine
Adapted from Food.com

1 cup water
1/2 stick butter, softened or slightly melted
1 egg
3 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. yeast
1 Tbsp. vital wheat gluten

1. Put ingredients in bread machine, in order suggested by manufacturer. My bread machine says to put liquid ingredients in first, which is how the recipe is listed. Run the dough cycle.

 2. Once dough cycle is complete, put dough on lightly floured surface & roll into a log. (Make sure it is LIGHTLY floured - this dough is fairly dry already & you don't want to add much flour to it.) Cut into 12 pieces for normal sized hamburger buns. The original recipe said 8, but they are HUGE.

*Also, preheat oven to 200 degrees about now.

 3. Shape into rounds & place on greased baking sheet. The rounds don't have to be too perfect, see?

4. After your oven has preheated to 200 degrees, turn it off. Cover baking sheets with a towel & put in warm oven for about 10 minutes. The dough will rise a little bit, as you can see in the picture below.

5. Once you've taken the risen buns out of the warm oven, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Once preheated, bake buns for 10 minutes. And there you go - delicious hamburger buns!!

The original recipe says these also make good hot dog buns. My aunt has made smaller versions, too, for dinner rolls. The first time I prepared these we had a guest for dinner (I don't know why I always experiment when guests are around...) and he thought they would be excellent by themselves, too. I've also eaten them with chicken salad... all to say this is a very versatile bread! Hope you like these as much as we do!