2 Hour Buns

When I was a small girl, my mother always baked bread every week for our rather large family of 8 children. On the other side of town, my aunt and uncle and their children, got store-bought bread in their family. It’s funny to think back on how my brothers and sisters and I loved to go to my aunt’s house and eat that soft store-bought bread, and my cousins would always rave about how good my mother’s home-made bread was when they came to our house.

Although I didn’t fully appreciate those days at the time, the smell of bread baking instantly takes me back to my mother’s kitchen and a memory of her standing at the kitchen table with her huge enamel bread bowl. She would work all day, kneading the dough, letting it rise, punching it back down and forming after loaf of bread. She would let it rise in bread pans on the shelf above our old wood stove covered by tea towels before finally baking them all to a nice golden brown.

Sometimes my mother would form some of the dough into buns or for special occasions, roll out the dough flat and sprinkle brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon on and then roll up the dough with its marvelous sweet innards, pinching the dough to hold it together tight. After rolling up the dough into a long cylinder, she would carefully slice the roll with 1" cuts and carefully place the cuts on a cookie sheet to make the best treat of all - Cinnamon Rolls.

When I was raising my family, it just seemed like it took too long and was too much work to make home-made bread, so we just bought bread like most everyone else. Then, years ago I found a recipe with quick-rising yeast to make homemade buns from start to finish in just 2 hours. I have always loved homemade buns, especially served hot from the oven with butter and raspberry or strawberry jam.  This 2 hour recipe also works very well for making cinnamon buns and they almost taste as good as my mother’s did!

I have always kneaded the dough by hand, but last year I got one of those fancy big  mixers that I’ve always wanted on sale. It came with a dough hook and let me tell you, that makes mixing the dough a real snap. My grandkids can smell the buns baking from their house, and it doesn’t take long for them to devour a batch. I have to make sure I hide a couple so that Mac gets some before they’re gone.

2 HOUR BUNS

3 cups lukewarm water

1/2 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of oil

1 tsp. of salt

2 tbsp. of instant yeast

4 eggs

7 - 8 cups of flour.

Mix yeast together with 4 cups of flour. In a separate bowl, whip the eggs, sugar, water and oil together.

Add flour and yeast mixture and blend well. Add remaining flour and mix well.

Let rise for 15 minutes and then punch down.

Let rise for 15 minutes and then punch down and form buns and position on a greased cookie sheet. Cover with a clean tea towel and let rise for one hour.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 - 18 minutes or until golden brown.