Hot pink burger buns

In a large bowl or the bowl of your mixer, weigh out and add your all-purpose flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast and stir to combine all your dry ingredients making sure there are no clumps. 

Add the butter and the beet juice to the dry ingredients. 

If using a stand mixer, knead for 8 minutes on medium speed. If you are kneading by hand, you will need about 15 minutes of kneading after all the ingredients are incorporated together. 

The dough should be smooth and a little bit sticky. 

Place your pink dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover. Let dough rise in a warm place for 1 to 1.5 hours. The dough should be doubled in size. 

Remove dough from bowl to a lightly oiled counter and divide into 6 pieces. I like to weigh my buns at this point to keep them all fairly consistently sized, and I usually get 6 buns that are all between 85 and 90 grams each. 

Roll each of your six pieces of dough on the counter until you have 6 balls. 

Add each ball to a parchment-lined sheet pan. 

Press down the top of each ball with a lightly oiled hand or the lightly oiled bottom of a mixing cup or small pan. If you want very tall and round buns, don't flatten them at all. If you want medium-height but still rounded buns press down only a little. If you want flat buns as you see in fast food restaurants, you should flatten each one fairly flat. 

Cover your buns with lightly greased plastic wrap or a second sheet pan flipped over on top of the pan you're using. 

Let the shaped buns rise for another hour or hour and a half until they are nearly doubled in size.

Near the end of your final proofing time, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (177 C). 

If you want to add sesame seeds, put a little water in a bowl and paint it carefully on top of each bun. Sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of the buns and the water should help the seeds stick to the top. 

Bake your buns for 12 to 14 minutes rotating the sheet pan halfway through the baking time. I typically bake for 7 minutes and then rotate and come back in another 5 minutes to make sure they aren't browning. At that point your buns should be done all the way through, you're just trying to make sure they stay pink and do not turn brown. 

Remove the buns to a cooling rack to cool before slicing.