My Gramma Anne's Buns Make Me So Hot!
I don't recommend being like me and baking all summer, however, we don't buy bread from the grocery store, so I bake all year round. Gramma's buns, and sourdough bread are the staples I keep in our home at all times.
I'm Going To Open Source My Little Polish Gramma's Bun Recipe
(If you want the recipe but don't need the photo steps, just scroll down to the bottom of the page.)
In a small bowl combine 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 Tablespoon of yeast, and 1/2 a cup of warm water.
You will leave this yeast/sugar/water mixture for about 10 minutes. While you are waiting start melting 1/2 a cup of either butter, margarine, or lard.
While you are waiting for that to melt, get out a large bowl. Add 3 and 1/2 cups of warm water, 1/2 a cup of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 Tablespoon of vinegar (I use my own homemade apple cider vinegar).
Add in your melted butter, margarine, or lard.
Your yeast mixture should be nice and frothy now, if not, it means your yeast is inactive. You will have to attain fresher yeast for the buns to rise unfortunately.
Stir it up little darlin'...
Now begin to add, pretty slowly, 9 - 10 cups of flour. I find it depends on the humidity of the day how much flour I need. When it's quite humid I sometimes need closer to 11 cups.
By the 9th or 10th cup you will have dough. Not too sticky, but not too dry, that's why going slow matters. When you've gotten it to the point where it's not sticking to your hands like crazy it's time to put your dough on a lightly floured surface.
Are you ready for your workout? It's kneading time! Knead well until the dough is nice and silky. This usually takes me around 15 minutes. If your dough is sticking to your hands, just sprinkle a bit more flour on the dough and keep kneading, repeat until the dough stops sticking to you.
When you're done, cover with a damp towel, or plastic wrap, and wait until it doubles in size.
BOOM!!
Grease up some baking sheets. This recipe yields approximately 25-35 buns depending on how big or small you want them.
Now's the part where you can get out all the anger and frustration in life that you've been holding in. PUNCH THAT DOUGH DOWN! Show it who's boss!
Pull off pieces and start forming your buns. This takes a bit of practice to get right, well for me it did. After a few tries, you'll get it! My first few batches of buns were pretty warped, but I got it right after about 3 tries.
Now that you have your buns formed and on trays, brush on a little melted butter, or even oil. I don't know if it adds a lot to the taste, but it sure helps keeping the plastic wrap, or damp towel from sticking to your beautiful buns when you cover them again for the second rise.
I forgot to do this one time and deflated my buns when I tried to take their cover off! Ooops!
Cover now for the second rise, allow them to double in size once again.
BOOM BOOM
Heat your oven to 350 degrees F and bake your buns until they are a beautiful golden brown. You may need to bake them at 375 it just depends on how hot your oven is, they're all different.
Voila! Cool on racks and enjoy Gramma Anne's (Formerly Secret ~ Now Open Source) Buns.
Ingredients
- 4 cups warm water
- 1/2 cup + 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 Tablespoon yeast
- 2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon vinegar
- 1/2 Cup melted lard/margarine or butter
- 9-10 Cup Flour
Directions
- In a small bowl combine 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 Tablespoon yeast and 1/2 cup warm water, leave for 10 minutes
- Melt 1/2 cup butter, margarine or lard
- In a large bowl combine remaining warm water, sugar, salt and vinegar
- Add melted butter/margarine/lard
- Add yeast mixture
- Start mixing in flour 1 cup at a time until a moist, but not sticky dough is formed
- Turn out and knead for about 15 minutes, until the dough is silky
- Cover and allow to double
- Once doubled punch down, form buns on greased baking sheets, and brush with oil or melted butter
- Cover and allow to double again
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F
- Bake until golden brown and cool on wire racks
Yeild: 25-35 buns
I know that 25 -35 buns is a LOT, but that's how Gramma Anne bakes, man. What I do is put a bunch in the freezer as soon as they've cooled and pull them out through the week as I need em. Keeps them super fresh and wonderful tasting instead of eating stale buns on day 3. This batch usually lasts our family of 5 about a week (with my husband and kids taking lunch every day). Of course I do bake sourdough bread, and make sourdough biscuits as well through the week.
I will be showing you how to work with sourdough starter, and all the wonderful creations you can make with that soon!
Until next time,
Sending a tonne of Love! Happy Baking!
@lindsaybowes, thank you very much for this recipe and the wonderful pictures of how to make the buns. I am going to the grocery tomorrow morning and getting the things needed to make these.
Ooh this is so wonderful Kate!! I'm thrilled that you have found the recipe!!! Happy Baking :) :) :) You will not be disappointed!!
These are such dramatic cooking photos! I bet you could produce a hell of a cooking channel on youtube. High impact baking! Boom!
My mother gave us her old KitchenAid mixer. Maybe when you share the sourdough recipe I'll blow the dust off that thing and plug it in.
Thank you Winston! I thought of making a video, but I suck at editing so far, a skill I'm just starting to learn. And who wants to watch me f#@k around for 3 hours LOLOL!!!!
I would LOVE to hear how your sourdough goes!! Yeah, I need to get a mixer maybe, but kneading is like my only exercise besides gardening :)
You're right - video editing is a whole difficult skill in itself - something I've never gotten into. You like how I'm just like, "yeah, why don't you do that?
But if you do, I'll watch!
HHAHAAAAAA I do like that cause it made me laugh!! I'm gonna figure it out one day, and I'll make sure I have my brightest shiniest apron on too and a nice tight bun, Martha it up!
Those are some amazing pictures of the cooking process! really wish more people did this and that this was the standard ;) you make me happy
Thank you for enjoying :) Smiles for you @robjc <3 and Hugs!
@lyndsaybowes looks splendidly! Are you from Poland? I am Polish and my stories are about this beautiful country :) Kindly please check! The latest one is about Beetroot Soup :) All the best!
Thank you for always making these buns. They are the staples to my belly.
AWWW, I'd do anything for you and the boys...hahaha ok and me too fuck I love these buns!!!
You guys prepared buns? We make chapathis with this ingredients. :-) She nicely prepared well.
Mmmmm chapathis sounds delicious, I will look it up, thanks @stefen!
These look divine. Great post Lyndsay!
Thank you very much, if you try them, please let me know how you like them @s-dbraybrook :) :) :)
Looks delicious! I have tried and failed at sourdough starter...would love to see how you do it!
I was given 1/4 cup of starter from a friend to start with, about 3 months ago, and all I have done is feed it 3 times a day since then. I haven't killed it yet! Horray!
Did you try and make a starter from scratch Karen? That's something I really want to try and do!
Yes, I tried starting one from scratch but it was wintertime here and just not warm enough in the house, I think. I am following @allaboutpastries and she has just posted about yeast starter from scratch. I might give it another go.
Ooh great, thanks for the tip, I'll go check out that article and save it incase I ever kill my starter by accident!
These look delicious :O
Off topic, but what is your tattoo of? It looks really cool.
Hi @fungusmonk :) I'm working on sleeves, definitely a work in progress, here's some of the art...
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://scontent.fyhz1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18447287_10154423704051791_7273397998736981050_n.jpg?oh=4a84b02f7c4877a171040ee13a0f77ac&oe=59CF8087)
Oh, that's lovely! Are they supposed to be anyone in particular? They seek like greek gods maybe?
It's from cover art, by Keith Parkinson, from my favourite book "The Faith of the Fallen" book 6 in the series "The Sword of Truth Series" written by Terry Goodkind!! Do you read fantasy at all? I find it parallels reality so much, and I've learned more from fantasy than I've ever learned from non-fiction!
I don't read much of anything anymore unfortunately, most of my active engagement with art tends to be music. I have been reading Carl Jung's Psychological Types lately though, due to a growing interest in personality theory.
It's all good, it's hard to find the time for everything. I've read Man and His Symbols, the Psychological Types sounds intriguing!
It's essentially the cornerstone of what would become Myers-Briggs. There's a lot of misconception and misinformation surrounding type theory, but it's something that I've found to be wordlessly, observably, real; I'm trying to ground my understanding so I can demystify it and hopefully disentangle the bunk from the legitimate.
@lindsaybowes, thank you very much for this recipe and the wonderful pictures of how to make the buns. I am going to the grocery tomorrow morning and getting the things needed to make these.