Who’s ready to have their kitchen filled with the sweet scent of homemade brioche burger buns??
My first foray into baking with yeast was sort of thrust upon me after agreeing to bake something along with the Great British Bake Off them each week. I made cinnamon rolls, which turned out to be both easy and delicious.
I know that a lot of people (myself included, until recently) have this idea that baking anything with yeast is difficult and time consuming but I promise you, it really isn’t!
Of course, there’s proving time but aside from this, a lot of recipes can be made with less than 30 minutes hands-on time and very little difficulty. So, if you’re scared of baking bread – give it a go! It’s far less work than you’d imagine and you really can’t beat the taste of freshly baked bread.
Anyway, onto these brioche burger buns! Brioche is an enriched dough (which just means bread with ingredients other than the basic flour, water & yeast). In this case it’s eggs, butter, milk and a little sugar. Nothing too crazy!
These brioche burger buns are a little lighter than the sugary sweet brioche I used to enjoy on holidays in France, which makes them perfect for savoury fillings. My favourite way to serve them is filled with this easy BBQ Pulled Pork – trust me, so good!
Other delicious ways to eat them include alongside soup or, exactly as the name suggests – with burgers. Or, ya know, keep things simple with a good slather of butter. Nothing tastes better than freshly baked bread and butter – heaven!
Ingredients
- 125ml water
- 50ml milk
- 35g sugar
- 1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
- 350g strong bread flour
- 75g plain flour
- 35g unsalted butter, softened
- 1 and 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
Instructions
- Add the water and milk to a bowl and gently warm in the microwave until lukewarm (about 30s on 50% power was about right for me). Add the sugar and yeast, and stir. Leave to sit for about 5 minutes until frothy.
- In a mixer, mix the flour, salt and butter until the butter has reduced to crumb size pieces. Alternatively, rub the butter into the flour by hand.
- Beat the eggs and reserve about a quarter of the mixture (used later to brush the rolls with). Add the remaining beaten egg and yeast mixture to the flour. Mix on a low-medium speed for 5-10 minutes until a dough is formed.
- Remove the dough to a large oiled bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. Leave to rise for about 1-2 hours until doubled in size.
- Once risen, remove to a floured surface and divide into 10. The dough will be very sticky but resist the urge to add lots of extra flour - too much will make it dense so use just what you need to be able to handle it.
- If you find the dough too sticky to handle, brushing your hands with oil can help. Roll each piece of dough into round balls. They'll flatten out a bit as they prove so make them slightly taller than you'd like them to end up.
- Once rolled, place each ball onto a lined baking tray, leaving 2-3 inches between rolls.
- Brush a sheet of clingfilm with oil then use to loosely cover the rolls (oil side down!). Leave to rise for another hour or so, until doubled in size again.
- Preheat oven to 180°c. Add a little water to the reserved beaten egg, and brush each roll with the egg mixture. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top.
Note: this post was originally published in November 2014 but was updated in November 2016. The recipe was updated to reduce the quantity of water and provide clearer instructions.