Pizza Dough Hot Dog Buns: 1 Pound of Dough, 6 Soft Buns

Here’s a math problem that has ruined more than one tailgate. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council says buns usually come eight to the pack and hot dogs ten, which means five bags of buns and four packs of dogs just to break even. I have stood in a grocery aisle doing that arithmetic out loud, and nobody looked impressed.

A pound of pizza dough makes six real hot dog buns. Not a pizza dog, not a wrapped pig in a blanket, a soft sliced bun you can load up like any other. The dough is already made, so the whole job comes down to weighing, shaping and baking in a way that keeps the sides soft.

I went through the bun specs, bakery temperature guides and the few home bakers online who actually do this. The short version: 2 2/3 ounces per bun, logs touching on the pan, 400°F, and pull at 190 to 200°F inside.

Does Pizza Dough Make a Good Hot Dog Bun?

Yes, with one honest caveat. Most pizza dough is a lean dough, meaning flour, water, yeast and salt with maybe a splash of oil. Classic bakery hot dog buns are enriched with milk, butter, sugar and often egg, so a pizza dough bun comes out a little chewier and more bread-like than the squishy supermarket kind.

On a loaded dog, I call that an upgrade. A sturdier bun survives chili, kraut and a toddler. It also takes a griddle beautifully, and home bakers already do this: one poster on The Fresh Loaf baking forum lists pizza dough as a regular bun dough, at 80 grams each and about 390°F.

Most of what ranks for this search is a different dish. Ooni’s pizza dog shapes dough into 8-inch long pieces, gives them a quick bake, then adds the hot dogs for a final blast of heat, and that looks like a fun night. This article is for the other job: a plain soft bun for hot dogs, sausages or anything else that needs one.

If you have only a scrap of dough, turn it into garlic knots instead. For a pound or more with no plan attached, the wider list of things to do with leftover dough is worth a look, and this is the most useful thing on it during football season.

How Much Dough Per Bun

Nobody online agrees on this, so I lined up the numbers I could verify. A Kayem New England style bun pack runs 6 buns to 12 ounces, so 2 ounces per finished bun. Home recipes land heavier because they measure raw dough, which loses a bit of weight in the oven.

My pick is 2 2/3 ounces of raw dough per bun, for the simple reason that a 16-ounce store-bought bag or a pound of homemade dough then divides into six with no leftovers. The Daily Meal’s wrapped pizza dog splits a pound the same way, six pieces. That is a generous bun without being a meal in itself.

Use this table for whatever you have on hand. All of it is plain division, so it works with homemade or store-bought dough. If you’re buying, here’s our take on the best store-bought pizza dough.

Feeding a crowd? Our menu plan for feeding 20 people is built around pizza, but the head-count math translates. And if you need more dough, the dough calculator scales a batch in seconds.

The Soft-Bun Tricks That Matter

Three things separate a bun from a breadstick. None of them involves changing your dough recipe.

Crowd the logs

This is the big one. The Hot Dog Council notes that commercial buns are baked in clusters in pans built for the job, and ThermoWorks’ New England split-top method bakes its buns as one rectangle, then slices them apart. My read on why it works: a log with neighbors can only rise up, and the sides never dry into crust.

Set the logs about 1/2 inch apart so they grow together during the proof. Six fit side by side across a 9 x 13 inch pan or a half sheet pan. If you want the fully squared-off look, a USA Pan bun pan has 10 slots of 1 5/16 by 4 13/16 inches, but nobody needs to buy a pan to eat a hot dog.

Shape tight

Flatten each portion into a 4 by 5 inch rectangle, roll it from the long side and pinch the seam hard. A loose roll bakes into a bun with a tunnel running through it, which is exactly where your mustard ends up. If the dough keeps springing back, walk away for 10 minutes; here’s why dough shrinks back and how to deal with it.

Add a little fat (optional)

Plain dough makes a fine bun. Butter makes a softer one. Innograin, a grain-science site hosted by the University of Valladolid, says fat makes crumb softer in the mouth and slows staling, with those benefits arriving at low levels, usually no more than 5 to 6 percent of the flour.

A pound of typical pizza dough holds roughly 9 to 10 ounces of flour (my estimate at 60 to 65 percent hydration). Five percent of that is about 1/2 ounce, or 1 tablespoon of soft butter. Knead it in for a few minutes, along with a teaspoon of sugar if you want more browning. Here’s what sugar does in dough if you’re curious.

Oven Temperature and Doneness

Pizza instincts work against you here. One home cook on The Food in My Beard bakes hot dog pizza sandwiches at 820°F for about 3 minutes, which makes for a fine-looking pizza-oven sandwich, just not a bun. For a soft crumb you want moderate heat.

Published bun and roll bakes run from about 350°F to 425°F. ThermoWorks bakes enriched split-tops at 375°F for about 18 minutes. A 1967 Oregon State Extension circular bakes pan rolls at 400 to 425°F. I use 400°F. Plain pizza dough has little sugar, so by my read it needs a touch more heat to brown than an enriched dough, and a shorter bake leaves less time to dry out.

For doneness, the thermometer beats the clock. ThermoWorks wants its enriched buns at 180 to 190°F, and its bread guide lists 200 to 210°F for leaner breads. Pizza dough buns sit between those two, so I aim for 190 to 200°F, which is my read rather than a published number. Slide the probe in from the end of a bun so it reaches the center.

The Recipe

Making Them Ahead and Storing Them

Game day schedules are unforgiving, so here’s the good news. NC State Extension says unbaked rolls keep in the fridge for 3 to 4 days or the freezer for a month. So you can shape the logs the night before, cover the pan and refrigerate it. Pizza dough has usually fermented already, so I wouldn’t push it much past a night or two, and if it does go slack, here’s how to rescue over-proofed dough. Give the pan 30 to 60 minutes on the counter before baking.

Starting from a frozen ball? Our guide to defrosting pizza dough quickly covers the fast route, and freezing dough the right way means you can keep a bun batch on standby all season.

Once baked, keep them out of the fridge. America’s Test Kitchen says rolls keep up to two days at room temperature in a zipper-lock bag, and that a cold fridge speeds up staling. University of Guelph food scientist Don Mercer says the same about refrigerated bread. For longer storage, America’s Test Kitchen wraps rolls in foil, bags them and freezes them for up to a month.

Thaw frozen buns on the counter in their wrapping, then griddle them. If you enjoy this whole game, the same dough also bakes into a sandwich loaf for the rest of the week’s lunches. For the party spread itself, these sit nicely next to our Super Bowl pizza ideas.

FAQ