K's Buns

My husband, K, has a milk intolerance. It isn't an allergy - he won't die if he ingests milk, although he'd argue that it sometimes seems like he will. He just gets ill if he eat too much milk. This includes most cheeses and whey. Read labels - you'll be surprised at some of the things we buy that contain milk in the form of whey. It's a filler. Cream of anything soups are out for us, too. So there's been a lot of recipe modification in our home. At first it was a pain, but now we jump at the challenge to "fix" a recipe and have it taste just as good as the original. We've had a few failures, but there are quite a few things that we've managed to re-tool to our satisfaction.

One of the store-bought items that got nixed early on was bread because most bread that you find in stores contains milk. We received a great break maker as a wedding gift, so K decided to start making our bread. He averages about 2 loaves per week for our family, mostly because of the sheer quantities of peanut butter and honey sandwiches that our 4 year old son consumes.

The store-bought bread ban includes hamburger and hot dog buns. K found a recipe for bread maker buns in this old book that we got in a box of cookbooks from my parents.

K has modified the original recipe (found on page 148) mostly because of his milk intolerance, but he was looking for a softer, yummier bun, too. We think those changes definitely make a more tender bun.

Hamburger/Hot Dog Rolls
Makes 12

Add the following ingredients, in the order listed, into your bread machine pan:

1 egg + splash of water, beaten together (reserve a small amount (maybe 2 tsp-1 Tbsp) for the egg wash on the finished buns)
milk and water to 1-1/8 cup total (he uses rice milk)
2 Tbsp butter flavored Crisco
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp (heaping) salt
3-1/4 cups flour (2-1/4 cup bread flour + 1 cup all purpose)
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp gluten

Set the dough cycle on your bread machine. Remove dough and punch down. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Form into 12 balls, make bun shapes and flatten. For hot dog buns, take a ball and form it into a longer sausage shape, flatten a bit. Cover and let rise for 1 hour. Brush with reserved egg wash. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes or until golden.