Homemade Sandwich Rolls: Be Still My Taste Buds

While my homemade hot dog bun attempt was acceptable for a first try, I was determined to make up for their so-so-ness by making a better baked good, and ASAP.

Last night we roasted a chicken, and planned to have leftover chicken sandwiches tonight for dinner. I wasn't relishing the thought of delicious chicken on boring store-bought sandwich bread, so my thoughts turned to tasty sandwich rolls... and thus I was inspired to try making homemade sandwich rolls!

After some quick internets research, I found an incredibly promising recipe for Homemade Sandwich Buns in 60 Minutes:

1 - It sounded fast.
2 - It's from a blog called Wives with Knives, and that is a fabulous name. I will be digging deeper into their blog later!
3 - The photos are incredibly enticing.
4 - I had all the ingredients on hand!

It's a super easy recipe to follow. I decided to strictly use my Kitchenaid Mixer for the mixing and kneading (I haven't trusted the mixer for kneading to date, but for ease of clean-up I tried it out), and it was a piece of cake!

I followed their recommendation and used my kitchen scale to measure out the buns, and chose to do 4 ounce balls to get bigger buns. (Have to admit, "bigger buns" made me laugh. I'll never grow up.) :)

This resulted in 9 buns + 1 mini bun.

Only things I did differently:
- Let the buns rise for about 70 minutes; they weren't puffy enough after 40.
- Let 3 buns + the mini bun rise, but froze the rest in their pre-risen state, to test how they defrost and bake!

Before baking, I brushed the tops (very gently) with egg yolk, and sprinkled them with kosher salt + caraway seeds to make them into kummelweck rolls (it's a Buffalo, NY thing).

Then I baked them at 400 degrees for 12 minutes, and they looked perfect so I took them out without checking the internal temp like they recommend in the recipe.

Waiting is not easy!!

And... they looked DEEEElicious.

Luckily I had the mini bun as my taste test, and the results were... two enthusiastic thumbs up!!

I am soooo excited for dinner now. Thanks, Wives with Knives!!!

I want to estimate the costs per roll for kicks... but I think this effort is well worth it no matter what. Inexpensive store-bought buns are so darn dense, but these are SO light on the inside and crusty on the outside. And the ingredients are the usual suspects, so assuming you have them on hand then you don't need to risk a trip to the grocery store that may result in purchasing other stuff!