Red and Blue Burger Buns
These homemade red and blue burger buns are perfect for your 4th of July cookout or for any time you just want to eat a really cool looking cheeseburger.
Every year around the Fourth of July people in my neighborhood break out their American flag tank tops, set off obscene amounts of fireworks and grill every hamburger or hot dog they can get their hands on.
This year though I decided to one up my neighbors - at least when it comes to the grilling aspect of the holiday - by making these homemade red and blue burger buns!
This was actually my first time making homemade burger buns - or any sort of homemade bread for that matter - and it honestly couldn't have been any easier.
Being the impatient guy that I am I used fast rise yeast and as far as the recipe goes I sort of just combined the recipe right from the back of the yeast packet with a couple other burger bun recipes I found online, added some gel food coloring and to my surprise the buns turned out perfect!
The recipe below makes six burger buns so I made two batches - one with red food coloring and one with blue food coloring - but if you want both colors of buns and only need six buns total you could also just halve the recipe and then bake all your buns together in one batch.
Feel free to top your burgers with whatever you normally add, but if really want them to be 4th of July themed you can do what I did and stick with strictly red, white and blue toppings like white onion, tomato, ketchup, white cheese and aioli.
I even made a couple burgers where the patties where breaded in red and blue Takis and deep fried, although those were almost impossible to eat with how tall they were. On the plus side though they did look really, really cool....
So, although I still don't own an American flag tank top and I refuse to light off fireworks because they terrify my dog LuLu I think it's safe to say that I definitely won the cookout portion of the 4th of July holiday!
Red and Blue Burger Bun Recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Combine milk, water and butter and heat to between 115°F and 125°F.
- Place 1 cup bread flour, sugar, salt, 1 egg, dry yeast and gel food coloring in a mixing bowl. Add heated liquid and beat at a medium speed for 2 minutes. Slowly stir in remaining 1 cup of flour.
- On a floured surface knead the dough for about 10 minutes until firm and smooth. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Divide dough into 6 equal sized balls. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes or until doubled in size.
- Beat the remaining egg in a bowl, brush the egg over the buns and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
- Preheat oven to 375°F and bake for 17 minutes.
