baking a hamburger bun on the stovetop

years ago I wrote two articles on baking breads on the stovetop, but since they are on a wiki, they've been mangled beyond recognition by now, and anyway my methods have improved over the years. so I'm going to give some details on how I make the buns for my epic cheeseburgers like this one:

first thing I do on a morning that I suspect I'll want bread is to put some yeast and flour in a small pot, add water, and stir. one or two teaspoons of yeast should be enough.

after stirring, it should look something like this (a little blurry, sorry). leave it for at least an hour while you do other things (coffee, Facebook, whatever).

when you come back to it, it should be bubbling, especially on a hot day. if you don't see any bubbles, you may need to warm it up, or if you haven't done this in a long time, your yeast may have died and you might need to buy some more. I've found it doesn't last the summers here in La Paz.

now you're ready to make the dough. first thing I add is a few drops of soy sauce and stir it in; I prefer it to salt for the added flavor. but you could use any kind of salt. its purpose, besides flavoring, is to control the yeast action, giving a better textured bread. then I add flour and some kind of oil or fat. the photo shows grapeseed oil, which is a nice, nutty, light oil. but for this roll I used asientos de cerdo, a lardy biproduct of making Sinoloa-style chicharrones.

keep stirring in flour until it gets too clumpy to stir. it should look about like this.

now for the kneading. I do it in the pot itself, but of course you could put it on a board if you prefer. in either case, dump more flour on and under the dough to keep it from sticking to the pot or board or hands. then keep folding it over onto itself, using palms and/or fists to blend it well, for several minutes.

when it bounces back after poking a finger in it, that should be enough. I used to go 10 minutes or more years ago, but nowadays 3 to 5 minutes seems enough. now just let it sit and rise for an hour or even half the day.

when you come back to it, it should have expanded two or more times its size. you can beat it down, shape it, and let it rise again, or you can do as I did and dump it out as-is onto your griddle (or comal, in my case). luckily I added enough flour on and around the kneaded dough so it came out easily and didn't stick to the pot.

cooking time will vary with heat and other factors. I'm using a large propane/butane canister through a homemade adapter into a small butane camp stove, and due to the regulator I'm only getting a low blue flame. so I cook it 9 minutes on one side and 4 on the other, covered with a thick Pyrorey (or Pyrex) glass bowl to help hold in the heat and make it more oven-like.

it's done! if I weren't worried about rust, I'd leave the glass over it a while longer and make sure the inside is finished cooking, but I know from experience that the moisture will condense, and I'm going out for a few hours.

I came back ready to make a cheeseburger, and sliced open the bun to make sure the inside was cooked. luckily it was, but if the bun rose too much you might need to slice it open right after the first baking, slather some oil on the bread, and cook the newly-exposed middle.