The Softest Homemade Hot Dog Buns Recipe

Bold Bakers, you deserve better than day-old, crumbly white hot dog buns that are full of chemicals, additives, and just don't have any flavor. I'm gonna show you how to make your own homemade hot dog buns using all natural ingredients, and they are far superior. So how to make the dough is really easy. Here I have some white all-purpose flour. I'm gonna add that into my stand mixer. Just so you know, if you'd like to add a little bit more whole wheat into your or your family's diet, you can do half whole wheat flour, half white, and that will work really well too. Also add extra flavor, kind of a nuttiness to it. Into this we're going to add a little bit of sugar, and that is to sweeten the dough, but also to help feed the yeast that's gonna be in there. Next, as always, in my bread doughs, salt, which just enhances the flavor of all the other ingredients, and instant yeast. I use instant yeast because just like this, you add it into your dry ingredients, like any other ingredient. If you use active dried yeast, I'm gonna put a note on BiggerBolderBaking.com of how much you need to do that. I'm just gonna give those a mix together. As always, my rule is just keep the salt away from the yeast just for the moment when you're adding it in, and then you can stir it all together. Our liquid. So now we're not just adding water to this. This is a brioche bun, a lovely buttery enriched dough. So we're going to add in milk, which adds extra fat, extra flavor, and makes it super yummy, and eggs. Add your eggs into your lukewarm milk. You want that milk lukewarm because yeast loves warm ingredients, it helps it grow. So heating that up a little bit on the stovetop or in the microwave will help a lot. Just whisk those two ingredients together. Turn on your machine with a dough hook, and slowly add in your liquid. Once you add in all your liquid, you will notice it's a bit of a wetter dough, but don't worry, that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Lovely. Just let it knead until it forms a ball. And just like any traditional brioche dough, we are going to slowly incorporate butter. Now this is room temperature butter, and we are going to bit by bit, just chuck it into the machine, just like that. Give it a good chuck. Mix it in until it incorporates, and then add in another bit. Lovely. As it slowly kneads, it will slowly incorporate all the way throughout the dough. Now brioche is a classic French dough, used for breakfast, danishes, used for morning buns. When you ever have an amazing hot dog or hamburger in a very nice restaurant, it's often done on a brioche bun. Great. Once your butter is incorporated, we're going to let this knead on medium speed for around like six to eight minutes or so. And during this time, the gluten will develop, and you'll start to see pockets of air, and you'll see that the dough is actually pulling these beautiful strands, and that's what's lovely about brioche, you get this really lovely elongated strands that just make the dough like so soft and kind of pillowy, you know? Or billowy. Pillowy or both of those things. Pillowy and billowy. Just so you know, I don't recommend doing this specific dough by hand, because it would just be so much work, and it's such a soft dough. Definitely use a machine. We need it to like really knead that gluten. Okay, lovely. I remember when I was training to be a chef, and making like classic brioche in our pastry class, and I still remember the results, I remember just like, I'd never had a dough like that before, and like all of the strands when you pulled it apart, and like the flavor, I was just like, I was mesmerized by it. Just that classic brioche, you know, the French style in the fluted mold with the little guy on top. So that's our dough, here I have a bowl. I'm gonna put a tiny bit of flavorless oil in here. And run my hand around that. This is just to help the dough, once it proves in this bowl, it's just going to glide up the sides easily with that little bit of oil in there. So make your dough's life easy and incorporate that. Then in with our dough, like I said, it's a very soft dough. This is exactly what it's supposed to be like, so do not freak out. Lovely. Beautiful. So now we're going to cover our dough nice and tight with cling wrap. For those of you who are new to bread making, doughs at this stage don't like to get air at them, so you want to cover them with a shower cap, or with cling wrap nice and tight. And then we're also going to add extra snugness, and put a kitty cat tea towel on top. So we're going to set this dough aside to proof for around an hour and a half to two hours. It does take a little bit longer than normal doughs because it's heavier, it's enriched, so we're just going to let it do its thing for that time. So here's our dough two hours later. It has puffed up, it's looking good, it's nice and soft. This is exactly what I want. Remember I was talking before about why brioche is so lovely, look at those gluten strands, do you see that? That is going to yield us beautiful hot dog buns. So just so you know, this recipe has existed on Bigger Bolder Baking for some time. But I never did a video, and one of the top questions we get about this recipe is please show us how to make the dough and shape it, we don't know how to shape it. And it's so simple, so here is your moment now, here's how to shape a hot dog bun. I'm going to take my dough, and you want to divide it up into six even pieces. If you have a weighing scale, you want it to be around 3.5 ounces each. One of my superpowers has been able to know the weight of doughs without weighing it. And like I said, you're going to get six buns. I probably should have done a recipe for five buns, but don't you always get like five hot dogs but then six buns. Whatever that's about. 3.5, put a little bit over there to that one. What's that? 3.5, 3.5, boom. Okay, so here's what you do, you take your piece of dough, and you're going to roll it into a ball, just like a dinner roll. Now I do have a video already of this, you just push the dough down into the surface, lightly floured, and it comes up into a nice smooth ball, see, just like that. Problems that you guys are having is that you're telling me you're getting creases and your buns aren't smooth, so this is how you do it. You make a smooth roll first. Because this is a lovely pliable soft dough, we're going to turn it over, we're going to put it like this. For those of you who have made my no knead baguette, this is very similar. We're going to roll up our bun, just like this. And we're going to make it into kind of like, you know, a rope. Now, just like this. Here's what you want to do, you see these ugly seams on the bottom? We have to pinch those to make sure that they don't pop open during baking. Okay, those are going to be on the underside. And then just like this, you have a lovely smooth bun, and you want it to be, let's see how did I do, six inches! You want it to be six inches. Gorgeous. If you see any creases at all still, just kind of try and pierce them together and make them disappear. This one is looking good, I'm going to place it on my baking tray. Okay, so let me show you again. Lightly floured surface, we have our piece of dough. Take all of those raggedy bits, put them on the bottom, nice smooth top, just like that. You can do it on your surface or in your hands. Now we have a lovely smooth dinner roll. Turn it over, smushy, smushy. And then roll it like this. This is going to give you the smoothest results, look at that. See that crease? Pinch it together so it's creaseless. Give it a little bit of a roll until it's six inches. Be careful about over flaring your surface, it's very, very difficult to shape bread if there's too much flour on your surface. Look at that, let me see. Six inches, boom, lovely smooth hot dog bun. Gorgeous. And onto our tray. Then just repeat that process with the rest of your buns. Just so you know, I spent a large part of my career as a bread baker so I'm very used to shaping bread. This does take practice, so keep on at it and I guarantee you, you will eventually end up with beautiful looking hot dog buns. So I'm very happy with how these look. No creases. So here's what we do. Cover them again in cling wrap, bring in your tea towel, cover them up, pop them over to the side. So roughly we're going to proof these guys for around 45 minutes or so. They don't take that long because they're smaller. You know it can take up to an hour depending on how warm your kitchen is. We're going to come back and I'm going to show you what they should look like before we put them into the oven. So my dough is proofed and I want to show you what you are looking for. As you can see they've puffed up. When you push on the dough the indentation stays. It doesn't bounce back really quickly. If it does that means they need longer to proof. But these are looking fantastic. So here's what we're going to do. The last thing is we want to get them lovely and nice and shiny. So a lovely egg wash all over these guys. All down the sides everywhere. Because I love a shiny hot dog bun or a hamburger bun. The ones in the store are always kind of, just the regular ones in the store are always a little bit dull. So that's another thing that's going to make these really stand out. Just so you know this summertime if you are cooking for a big group of people you can double even triple this dough. And also great news it makes great hamburger buns. Okay there's nothing else left to do except get them into a nice hot oven. Bake your hot dog buns at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, 190 degrees Celsius for roughly 20 to 22 minutes until they're a lovely golden brown. The hot dog buns are done and they look gorgeous and they smell so buttery. So check these out. They're lovely and shiny from that egg wash. And you see that they're lovely and smooth and they kept their shape. This is fantastic. So I want you to see this. This is important. This hot dog bun has a crease or what looks like a crack in it. Obviously this bun was not completely smooth. This can happen to you. Do not worry. Practice makes perfect. You'll get it the next time and you'll end up with lovely smooth ones just like this. I also want you to see this, the benefit of doing brioche. Do you see how soft that is under my fingers? It's like a bread cloud. This is so perfect for hot dogs. Now the last thing that I like to do personally is I like to soften that crust a little bit after it comes out of the oven. So while it's hot lay on a clean tea towel and that will kind of create steam between the towel and the bread. It will just soften those crusts so you just have a lovely perfect roll for eating. I'm going to let those cool down and get some hot dogs on the grill. Time to fire up the grill and cook off some hot dogs. I absolutely love grilling especially right now in the summertime when the weather heats up and my absolute favorite thing is a good old fashioned hot dog. My hot dog buns are best eaten fresh so slice that puppy open. Put a dog in the middle and dress it any way you want. Mustard, ketchup, relish, whatever you're into. I like the whole shebang. As you can see by looking at them these hot dog buns are super soft and a perfect accompaniment to a firm crisp hot dog. If you're like me you'll enjoy your hot dog with a beer. As you can tell by looking at them these hot dog buns are soft and superior to store bought. Often you'll see store bought buns left on a plate after a barbecue but no more. Now that you know how to make your own homemade hot dog buns they will be devoured I guarantee you. You know I've worked in Michelin Star restaurants fine dining for many years and a good hot dog cannot be beat. I absolutely love them. Try this recipe it is going to up your barbecue game this summertime. Thanks so much for watching, check out my other summer recipes for cheesecakes, pies, ice creams and I'll see you back here again this time next week. Thanks so much.