Perfect Homemade Hot Dog Buns -- in about an hour!

I know that I sound like a Lenscrafters commercial, but this recipe for homemade hot dog (or hamburger) buns is as easy as it gets.  From start to finish, I had beautiful golden homemade hot dog buns in an hour. Seriously!

I love baking bread, which is fairly new to me. I used to own a bread making machine, but it broke and I never replaced it.  A few years ago, I discovered that my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer does a great job of mixing and kneading bread dough.  That's when I began to experiment with making bread rolls, and that I could have piping hot homemade rolls in an hour.  My husband's favorite bread rolls are my Buttered Rosemary Skillet Rolls.  (If you look at my Recipe Index By Category, you'll see a collection of bread recipes that I've made.)

I've always wanted to try making homemade hot dog buns. A recent trip to buy hot dog buns left me coming up empty. They were all sold out.  Necessity is the Mother of Invention, so I did a little research on how to make hot dog rolls, and I settled on a recipe from Allrecipes.com.

I have a Danish Dough Whisk, that is a great tool for mixing bread dough by hand.  The dough is a bit wet, and becomes sticky at first.  For the dry ingredients, all you need is All-Purpose Flour (or bread flour), salt and Instant Yeast (with this batch, I used Fleischmann's Rapid Rise yeast).  For the wet ingredients, you use milk, water and butter.

As you can see, the dough is very soft.  Once mixed together, I dumped the dough onto a generously floured surface and began kneading the dough, adding a little flour at a time until smooth and elastic.

I cut the dough into ten pieces, then stretched them into a rectangular shape (no need for perfection here), then rolled them into a hot dog shape.  

These look a but "rustic" (in other words...crude), but after placing them into my "proofing" oven (turning the oven on WARM for a few minutes, then turning it off)...

...the bread dough had risen in 30 minutes.  The reason that I placed the buns closely together, is that I wanted soft edges-- just like the commercial hot dog buns that I buy at the grocery store.

This extra step is optional:  I whisked one egg and lightly brushed each roll evenly, then sprinkled on poppy seeds.

These were baked at 400F for about 10-12 minutes.  The aroma of fresh baked bread...what can I say?

From start to finish, this took less than an hour! 

These are the BEST hot dog buns I've ever had! Seriously.  Not only are they fast and easy to prepare, but they are tender.  You will impress your friends and family if you make these. 

I've always wanted to try spiral-cutting our hot dogs, ever since Sue posted this on her blog   "The View From the Great Island".  I think the hot dogs look a bit more "gourmet"...

 ...and I like the way the condiments get into the nooks and crannies of the dogs. Everyone's got their own preference-- ketchup or no ketchup? I'm strictly a yellow mustard person. Sweet pickle relish and onions will do, too.   It's a little tricky to do, so I'll post the "how to" video at the end of this post.

TASTING NOTES:  I will never buy hot dog buns again.  I mean that. I like having the ability to shape the rolls to fit the size hot dog or sausage that we'll be grilling.   I have the option of adding poppy or sesame seeds-- or, just leaving the rolls plain.  How fun would it be to make mini rolls, and use cocktail franks?! The possibilities are endless. Wait! You can easily adapt this recipe for hamburgers, too!  My next goal, is to tweak the recipe to include whole wheat flour as well.

On my next post, I will show you how I adapted this recipe to shape into hamburger rolls, using  stand mixer. I made the hamburger rolls when I created a Hawaiin Bullseye Burger for Target Stores.   

 

**Speaking of Target-- the winner of the Target Grilling Gift Card Giveaway is.... #10 "Holly" Congratulations! I will send you an email so that you can send me a shipping address. **

I always post a printable recipe card at the end of each recipe post. If you cannot view it, you might be using an older version of InternetExplorer. You should be able to view my recipe cards with Safari, Mozilla, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
If you still can't view the recipe card, all of my recipes are stored on Key Ingredient, by clicking here.

Here's the printable recipe, and if you keep scrolling down, you will see the videos on how to make these rolls and how to spiral cut hot dogs: