Brioche buns

Brioche buns

12
For burger night, forget about store-bought burger buns. Make the best burger yet with our brioche bun recipe, giving you a flavourful, beautifully golden bun with a soft and tender crumb. This French bread type is known for its light texture and delicious buttery taste. With our brioche buns, making homemade burger buns that taste delightful with an array of different toppings is incredibly easy.
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Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 200°C (regular oven).
  • Transfer milk and yeast to a stand mixer bowl and dissolve the yeast. Add eggs, beat them into the milk, and add sugar, salt, and flour (save a bit of flour).
  • Knead the dough with a dough hook at the stand mixer’s lowest setting for about 10 minutes.
  • Add the butter to the dough and continue mixing at the lowest setting for about 2 minutes until the butter has been distributed throughout the dough.
  • Knead for about 10 minutes at the stand mixer’s medium setting until the dough releases from the sides of the bowl and gathers in a lump on the dough hook – if needed, add the remaining flour.
  • Divide the dough into 12 equally big pieces and roll them into buns – you do not need to flour the countertop. Press down gently on the buns so they become flat (approx. 8 cm in diameter).
  • Place the buns on two lined baking sheets and let them proof, covered, in the refrigerator for 8-24 hours. Take the buns out of the refrigerator and let them proof a second time somewhere warm for about 1 hour.
  • Brush the burger buns well with beaten egg and bake them, one baking sheet at a time, in the middle of the oven for about 15-20 minutes until they are beautifully golden.
Enjoy!
Tip

You may be wondering how to make a brioche burger bun without a stand mixer and the answer is to knead the dough by hand. We do not recommend using a hand mixer with a dough hook as the almost 25 minutes of kneading will strain the compact motor far too much and may result in the early demise of the wonderful piece of equipment. Getting the wet and sticky brioche dough to achieve the right consistency by hand, however, will require some patience, so we recommend using a stand mixer.

Tip

However, if you do not own one, the best way to knead the dough by hand is to use the so-called slap-and-fold technique. What you do is pick up the dough and slap it onto your clean countertop, now pick up the top half of the dough and stretch it a bit before folding it down over the rest, trapping air inside it. Pick up the dough, slap it down, and repeat this process. When repeated continually, the dough will eventually become smooth in texture and stop sticking to your hands.

Questions about brioche buns

With our easy brioche bun recipe, you can serve up beautiful golden burger buns that are perfect for dinner. Below, you can learn more and get ready to make brioche buns by reading our answers to the most frequently asked questions about this delicious type of bread.

What is a brioche bun?
A brioche bun is a bun made from so-called enriched brioche bread. Enriched bread is richer than most other bread types because it contains higher amounts of eggs, butter, and/or milk. It is known for its delicate, soft textures and rich taste. Golden French brioche bread is no exception.
How to make a brioche bun?
Making your own brioche buns from scratch requires that you plan and prepare the dough a day in advance, so it has sufficient time to rise. With a stand mixer to knead your brioche dough properly, making deliciously buttery homemade burger buns is not hard work though. It is kneaded for a long time, then divided into buns, and left to proof for 8-24 hours in the fridge, then left for an additional hour at room temperature before baking. Serve the brioche buns while they are still warm and enjoy their rich, sweet flavour with your burger toppings of choice.
What to put in a brioche bun?
While most people use brioche buns to make delicious burgers with beef patties, chicken, or pulled pork for dinner, nothing is stopping you from enjoying a warm, rich brioche bun as an afternoon treat with butter or jam or from using it to create an indulgent breakfast treat like an Eggs Royale where the brioche bun is loaded with spinach, smoked salmon, a poached egg, and topped with rich hollandaise sauce. However, the classic use is for burgers, so choose your favourite fillings and start making these delicious brioche buns.
How long are brioche buns good for?
Due to the high content of butter and eggs, a homemade brioche bun lasts only for up to 3-4 days. Store the baked buns in an airtight container placed on the countertop or in a dark pantry. Storing brioche buns in the refrigerator will not prolong their shelf life so if you do not plan to eat the homemade buns within a few days, consider freezing them.
Can you freeze brioche buns?
A homemade brioche bun freezes well. Wrap it tightly in cling film or aluminium foil and store it in a freezer bag or airtight container for up to 3 months. When you are ready to indulge in a tender brioche bun, let it thaw on your countertop for 1-2 hours and heat it in a preheated oven for about 10 minutes at 150°C (regular oven).

Ingredients

Cold milk
100 ml
Yeast
25 g
Eggs (approx. 250 ml)
5
Sugar
2 tsp
Coarse salt
1½ tsp
Wheat flour
550 g
Soft butter in smaller pieces
200 g
Beaten egg for brushing
1

Homemade brioche buns for burgers

A tender and buttery brioche burger bun tastes great with a range of different toppings. You can use these brioche hamburger buns to make classic cheeseburgers with beef patties, lettuce, onion, tomato, ketchup, cheddar cheese, and bacon. If other types of meat are more to your liking, find inspiration in our flavourful chicken burger or lean into the slow cooking side of things and make your own marinated pulled pork with homemade coleslaw for a delicious American-inspired pulled pork burger. You can of course also go for full-out on vegetables and fill your brioche bun with various roasted vegetables – using mushrooms gives your veggie burgers a lovely umami flavour.

Make a soft and buttery brioche bun

While this may not be a quick brioche bun recipe, the buns it yields are delicious. They are soft, a little sweet, and deliciously rich. One of the reasons it takes longer to make enriched bread like these brioche buns, which contain a lot of egg, butter, and milk, is that the dough needs to be kneaded for longer to activate the gluten and ensure a light and airy crumb. To make sure you get to indulge in all the buttery deliciousness an enriched brioche bun has to offer, serve and enjoy it warm.

Easy burger buns for dinner

Though making your own brioche hamburger buns requires a little planning ahead as they need to proof for at least 8 hours for the first proof, the result is truly worth it. Though you may scoff at the term 'easy' since the buns take quite a long time to prepare, brioche bun ingredients are pantry staples and most of the hard work with mixing is performed by your stand mixer, meaning it is fortunately rather easy.

If the idea of making your own homemade bread to fill with different tasty types of vegetables and meat is something that interests you, we suggest having a look at our recipe for pita bread and panini bread as well.

Make it your own

Experiment with our brioche burger bun recipe by sprinkling the buns with sesame seeds after brushing them with beaten eggs. Sesame seeds have a mild almond-like flavour that is enhanced as they are toasted in the oven. The nutty flavour complements the buttery, slightly sweet taste of the brioche bun very well and the seeds, which are available in both light and dark varieties, look beautiful atop a golden brioche bun.

You might also like to play around with the size of your homemade burger buns to make smaller brioche slider buns. Though a mini brioche bun tastes just as delicious as a normal-sized one, sliders are a refreshing take on regular burgers. The cute mini burgers are perfect as snacks or hors d'oeuvres at large gatherings or as an entrée at a dinner party that stands out from the usual servings.

To make them even more beautiful, brush them with melted butter just as they come out of the oven. This will give them a nice shiny surface.