Potato Burger Buns

Potato Burger Buns

Hamburger buns are pretty boring. They're ridiculously cheap, come in either white or whole wheat versions, and are usually a sponge for ketchup, mustard, mayo and relish. For a lot of barbeque sandwiches, you want the cheapest, whitest, mushiest buns to serve your slow-cooked meat on. But I like to make my own bread, so before company came over for Saturday lunch, I woke up early to try making homemade burger buns.

This recipe from Cook's Illustrated promised that the use of potatoes in the dough would result in a tender, fast-rising bun. Instead of using leftover mashed potatoes, or powder from a box, you first peel, dice and boil a Russet potato. The cooking water is saved and the pieces are mashed with a bit of butter. Both these ingredients are then added to a white bread roll recipe.

I weighed out each ball of dough to exactly 2.75 oz and ended up with 9 buns plus about 2.5 oz leftover, which I turned into a smaller bun. My burger buns needed an extra 10 minutes or so to get deeply browned. I think it might be my oven, and not the recipe. And the result? I must say that these were delicious, as most homemade bread is, but there wasn't anything really that remarkable about them. There was no potato taste at all, which surprised me.

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