When I made the menu up last weekend, I thought today would be a nice day to grill out hamburgers. But I didn’t know that Tommy would get sick and that we’d be housebound (in the rain, with no chance to walk up to the corner grocery store to buy hamburger buns) at the end of the week. I had the hamburger meat, so I decided to try a homemade hamburger bun recipe that I’d seen on one of the frugal mommy blogs that I frequent. Here’s my recipe, adapted for use without a breadmaker. (And here is the original recipe that uses a bread machine.)
Homemade Hamburger Buns 
1 ¼ cups skim milk
1/3 cup canola oil
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 1/3 cups flour
1 packet yeast
1. Heat milk to very warm, not boiling (in my microwave, this was 90 seconds).
2. Combine milk, oil, sugar, salt, yeast, and one cup flour. Stir until blended with a sturdy wooden spoon.
3. Add the remaining flour, ½ cup at a time, until a stiff dough forms.
4. Knead about 5 minutes, until smooth and not sticky. Cover and let rise until doubled (about an hour). Preheat oven to 100 and turn it off.
5. Divide into 10 pieces, form each into a ball and then flatten with your palm until about the thickness of a pancake. Put them on a baking stone (the original recipe called for a parchment paper lined baking sheet) with sides just touching.
6. Cover with cloth and put in the warm oven to rise until doubled (45-60 minutes). To preheat the oven for the next step, though, I had to take them out halfway through.
7. Preheat oven to 400. When you put the buns in the oven, reduce temperature to 375. Bake 12-17 minutes (mine were golden brown at 12, but they were the teensiest bit doughy in the middle. The recipe says 17.).
8. Cool and slice!