Hamburger Buns

(8 buns). Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup of the water, heated to lukewarm (don't heat all the water, just the 1/4 cup). Leave to proof for about 5 minutes. Stir the salt with the rest of the (cold) water in a large bowl. Beat the eggs gently until well-mixed. Add about 3 cups of flour, the oil, eggs, and dissolved yeast to the water and mix with a fork until smooth and fully blended. Add another 2 cups of flour and mix/knead with your hands briefly, long enough to mix. At this point the dough should be somewhat sticky. Set aside for 10 minutes. Now, add just enough flour to prevent the dough from being sticky and knead vigorously with your hands until the dough is very smooth and silken. Add just enough water to make the dough slightly soft, mixing in carefully with your hands. Cover with a towel and allow to rise in a *cool* place for 3 separate risings, doubling in bulk with each one, punching down vigorously at the end of each rising. The first rise should take 6 hours or more (yes, just put it in the closet and walk away - you can leave for the day in safety - nothing bad will happen), the second about 2 hours, the third less than an hour. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Divide the dough into 8 balls and press each into hamburger-bun tins lined with parchment. (The ideal tin for this is the 4-inch "millason" mold available from http://www.surlatable.com.) Sprinkle sesame seeds on top and press lighly in. Bake at 375 F for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are nicely domed and brown. Remove from the oven and seal in Zip-Loc bags. Place in the freezer and keep until ready to use. Defrost before use. (Don't skip the freezer step - see notes below) Notes: All measures are approximate. Go by feel and the qualitative descriptions. Bread-making is an art so you need to do things more by judgement than measurement. You will get best results with the highest-protein bread flour you can find. Good high-protein flour is a light tan in color and becomes really doughy with water added. The longer the bread takes to rise, the better it will be. This is the reason for the small amounts of yeast and the cool rising place. There's no reason to monitor it closely during the first rise - as I say, just leave for the day if you feel like it. I specify hand-kneading because it gives better results and because you can judge more accurately when you've kneaded it enough. A KitchenAid makes it difficult to determine the right timing and can break the gluten with overstretching. Amazingly, the buns improve greatly by being frozen and defrosted. The plastic-bag trick keeps the crust from becoming hard and crisp. So be sure to sack your buns and freeze them. Both texture and flavor will be superior.