hot dogs

For hot dog buns on a whole 'nuther level, start the night before. Add room temperature water and yeast to a bowl. Allow to proof. Just for the heck of it, let it proof. And what does that prove exactly? It proves the yeast is alive and kicking and it gets the yeast off to a good comfortable start on a wild night of partying. Add an unbelievably small amount of yeast, say 1/4 teaspoon, because you're going to let this go at its own good time, probably even over twelve hours, and when you're not looking, the yeast is in there having wild sex with each other and multipling like mad, then having sex with their offspring and with their offspring's offspring and with their brothers and sisters and cousins, and multiplying without any sex partners at all, in the insane orgiastic undisciplined way that yeast get carried away with themsleves, so there's no point in starting out with a lot of it.  Add salt, which has the effect of knocking back on some of that yeast sex,  and sufficient flour to work into a loose dough ball. This is all the kneading the dough is going to get. None of that knead for ten minutes stuff is necessary, unless you think it's fun like I do, it doesn't hurt.  Cover and fugetaboudit. 

The next day, poke a knife around the edges of the bowl to separate the risen dough from the bowl without deflating it too much. Be kind to your dough, their lives are about to end but they don't know it yet.  Do not punch it down, that's counter productive.  It's still stuck to the bottom of the bowl. Invert the bowl over a sheet of floured aluminum foil or parchment paper. Help it to separate with a few deft pokes with the knife or spoon managed to aid the dough from loosening from the bowl. Let 'er plop onto the aluminum foil. Use a bench scraper or your fingers to carefully shape the dough wad into a vague rectangle with two sides the length of a hot dog, stretching here and patting there. Use the bench scraper to separate the dough wad into thirds or fourths or or fifths or whatever, with the intention of allowing the segments to recover from this transfer from bowl to work surface and to rise into rectangular hotdog bun shapes.  Cover the buns. I use an inverted plastic storage container. Turn on the oven as high as it will go. When the oven comes to temperature and your rectangles have resumed their rise and are probably growing back into one another, use the aluminum foil to to pull the buns into the oven with as little disruption as possible. I use a cookie sheet or a cutting board as a pizza peel (a thing like a giant spatula or pizza shovel) to transfer from work surface to oven. Bake for about twenty minutes.

Because of the long proofing period, the dough ages to an old-world texture and flavor that is utterly absent from breads made quickly. And by quickly I mean breads risen within just a few hours, which is the whole point of modern single-species yeast marketed for home baking. See? We're bucking the system here by purposefully going slowly instead of ripping them off quickly. I tell you, you'll never buy another package of hot dog buns again, and every time you have the misfortune of being presented with an ordinary white-bread bun by someone who simply doesn't care for your well-being, you'll be thinking, "gee, this would be so much better if it was only on one of my own home-made buns."  And when that day comes, congratulations, you are now officially arrogant when it comes to hot dog buns.