THIN SANDWICH BUNS

Steps:

• In a bowl sprinkle the sugar over the warm water, then do the same with the yeast. Add the egg and oil and combine. In a separate container, use a fork or a whisk to stir together the flour, bran, wheat gluten, and salt. Add 1/2 of this mixture to the wet ingredients and blend. This is the sponge.
• Let rise 30 - 45 minutes.
• Add rest of flour mixture and knead for about 5 minutes. I use my stand mixer with the dough attachment. This dough will be sticky.
• Spray 2 cookie sheets with cooking spray. Divide dough into 16 equal portions. This is a wet dough so instead of adding any additional flour, I weigh the dough on a food scale and divide it by 16. Then I weigh out each portion and put 8 on each cookie sheet. Don't worry about how it looks now.
• Take a 4" biscuit cutter and place it over one of the dough portions. If you wet the inside of the cutter as well as your fingers you can spread the dough into a perfect circle by using your fingers to flatten it to the inside edge of the biscuit cutter. (These will be very thin but they will rise). Remove the cutter, re-wet the inside and use it to do the same thing to the remaining 15 buns.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let the buns rise until double in bulk, about 30-45 minutes.
• Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Don't overbake. Cool the buns and then cut them in half for sandwich buns.
• Edit Note: Since I first started making these I've made 2 changes. One is that I make them in muffin top pans sprayed with Pam. No cutting involved.
• The other thing is that I use oat fiber instead of the wheat bran. I ordered oat fiber online. It is NOT the same as oat bran and is in many things these days, so I decided to try it instead of wheat bran. It is very high fiber, few calories, and pleasant tasting. Just use in moderation. In this recipe I use only 1/4 cup. It is 5 calories and 26 grams of fiber for the 1/4 cup. Also, it is more mild tasting than the wheat bran.
• Each bun has 108 Calories; 1g Fat; 5g Protein; 20g Carbohydrate; 4g Dietary Fiber; 13mg Cholesterol; 124mg Sodium.