Hamburgers with Homemade Fries and Buns

A free Sunday at home missing our time in America was the perfect chance to make some hamburgers. No buns in the apartment and no stores open we decided to go all out and make our own hamburger buns and while making the perfect American meal, why not add fries to complete it?

We started off with the buns since they need plenty of time to rise.

The recipe we used called for:
170 ml water
1 el yeast
40 g butter
 ~ 500 g flour
40 g sugar
1 TL salt
1 egg


Mix all the dry ingredients together (yeast included). Add butter and egg and mix. Then slowly add the water. The dough should become sticky but slowly move away from the edges (thanks to the oh so tastiness and greasiness of butter!) Take dough out and work it with your hands. Then put it in a bowl, cover with a towel, and leave it somewhere warm for one hour. We tried first the bathroom but then changed to under the oven in a drawer :).


During this time we prepared the potatoes. Cut potatoes (we usually peel them but somehow we misplaced our peeler and were too lazy to do it with a knife). Make long and reasonably thin strips (depending on how long you want to wait for them to cook). Put in bowel with a small (tiny!) amount of oil and a generous amount of salt. Mix and spread on a baking sheet. Bake 45 minutes to over an hour on 225 turning every so often.

During the fry cooking time you can prepare your buns out of the risen dough. Get rid of the air in the dough by kneading for a bit. Form small balls (smaller than you think you need since they will rise so much)
and put them on a baking sheet. Put back in a warm area for another 30-45 minutes.

While we waited for the hamburger buns to finish rising we prepared the meat and toppings for our hamburgers. Originally, we thought it would be fun to make sliders (tiny burgers) but our buns turned out to be gigantic so we doubled up our tiny patties. We also added some salt, pepper, onion and garlic (nom nom nom --> onion and garlic lovers!) to the meat.

For toppings we sliced up pickles, hot peppers, lettuce, and onions (one can never have too many (if you can't tell by the 5 kg onion bag!).

By this time our buns were ready to cook at 175 for about 15 minutes. Fries were just finishing up (crisp on the outside, soft on the inside!) and stayed in the over during this time. Patties and onions were cooked on the stove.

After another 15 minutes everything was ready. American style burgers with fresh homemade buns and crispy fries to boot!
 

We needed about 2 hours for the whole meal... if you want to reduce your time significantly buy some buns... but we recommend making them - its so much more fun :).