Cider Slider Buns

I've been thinking a lot about the menu for my annual New Year's Eve party.  Every year the food gets a little fancier and requires a little more work.  This year, I think one of the things I'm going to do is pulled-pork sliders.  And I'm going to make all of the slider buns myself.  Since I've never made sandwich buns before, I figured I better experiment beforehand...

I have made bread many times, but always with water for the liquid, and it always comes out denser than I like for sandwiches. 

Yesterday, I tried out this recipe for homemade hamburger buns from Williams-Sonoma.  They came out pretty tasty.  I cut the recipe in half, and ended up with 8 buns that were somewhere between slider size and hamburger size.  

They tasted good with the sloppy joe's I made for supper last night, 

and with the tuna salad I made for lunch today.

So that is definitely a recipe I can use for my New Year's Eve menu.  However, it is not my recipe.  It belongs to Williams-Sonoma.  So of course, I had to do something to make it mine.  

Today, I substituted apple cider for the milk, and bacon grease for the butter.  Now, it's my recipe. 

Since I had absolutely no idea how this would turn out, I cut yesterday's recipe in half, and made 4 buns. 

So, if you want more than four small buns...double or triple this recipe.

Cider Slider Buns

3/8 c apple cider

2 tbs  bacon grease

1 1/8 tsp yeast

1 1/4 tbs sugar

1 1/4 tsp salt

1/4 c wheat flour

3/4 c flour

Put the cider and grease in a small saucepan and stir on medium heat just until the grease has melted.  Remove from heat, add yeast and sugar, stir.  I'm too lazy to wait for the yeast to proof...but you can if you want.  Add the salt and flour, stir to combine, knead til smooth.  Cover and let rise for an hour or two.  Divide into buns, put them on a baking tray, and let them rise again.  (Mine didn't really rise the second time...but they came out fine in the end so I don't think it matters.)

Bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes.

They are tasty.  They definitely won't go with everything...but I think they will go well with my cider pulled-pork.  I'll make some regular buns as well though, in case some people are scared of cider-bacon buns.  

In other news...I just realized this is my 200th post!  I've had this blog for 20 months, and posted 200 times. I feel like I should have done something extra-super-special.