A new toy, a new recipe, and hot dogs!

I saw the pan.  I thought it was pretty cool.  But who really needs a pan that only makes hot dog buns?  Probably the same person who needed a $35 garlic press.  Yes, that would be me.

So I ordered it and it arrived this week.  Now all I needed was a recipe for hot dog buns.  Thanks to King Arthur Flour I found one!

The recipe itself is pretty easy, water, sugar, yeast, salt and flour, and of course, time.  Here's a LINK to the recipe.

The dough mixed up very easily and even kneading wasn't too much work.  Once I had a nice, elastic dough it was time to let it rise for an hour.

Next, form the dough in to 18 buns.  My fancy dancy hot dog pan made 10 buns so I had enough dough over for eight hamburger buns too.

After another 45 minute rise, an egg wash is added.  I like sesame seeds on my hamburger buns so I added some!

Twenty minutes later, out of the oven come these absolutely beautiful buns!  Why would you buy buns when these are so easy?  Yes, you need to be home for a few  hours but there really wasn't much work involved.  Also, it cost me less than $2 to make 10 hot dog buns and 8 hamburger buns!

Well we had to try them didn't we?  We'd just had hamburgers so hot dogs it was!  I'm not a big fan of hot dogs.  Dave is and the dogs are.  We hide their pills in hot dogs!  But every once in a while, in the summer, a hot dog off the grill hits the spot.  It was 91 degrees in the Twin Cities today.  Today was a hot dog day!

I couldn't just put any hot dog into homemade buns now could I?  These buns deserved grass fed hot dogs from Applegate Farms.  We tried two varieties, the Ballpark Style Hot Dogs and the Chicken Hot Dogs. 

I'll admit it, I didn't think I was going to like the chicken hot dogs.  But with only 60 calories I had to try them.  I've tried chicken and other "diet" hot dogs before and none of them had any flavor let alone texture.  And, to be honest, I'm not really sure what makes a "ballpark" either.  What I do know now is that both of these were really good hot dogs!

The grass fed beef ballpark hot dogs were even better!  Like the chicken hot dogs they were well spiced and had a great beef flavor.  They were both definitely worthy of my homemade buns!

I found fresh tomatoes at Farmer's Market this morning so we had to have a caprese salad with the hot dogs.  I used my new favorite olive oil and balsamic on the salad.

Paired with this delicious dinner was a Cuvaison Mt. Veeder Cabernet.  YUM!

We couldn't skip dessert tonight so I made another version of the Noble Pig puff pastry tarts.  I picked up some rhubarb and fresh strawberries at Farmer's Market this morning too and they made absolutely yummy tarts!