Bit late these, but did you see how many restaurants I hit over Easter? Give a girl a chance to find those elasticated trousers…
Mum put The Fear into me recently, as she told me that hot cross buns are really difficult and normally come out like lead shotputs, rather than the fluffy curranty vehicles for butter and honey that they should be. Last Easter, I made them in blissful ignorance of this, from a recipe in the River Cottage Bread Handbook and they came out ok. This year, following Dan Lepard’s recipe in Baking With Passion, they seem fine too so I think, Mum, it’s finally safe to make them now without worrying that you’re going to create super-dense nuclear core material in the oven.
At a distance of a year, I honestly can’t remember which version was better – if you don’t make your own ice-cream though, the non-fat milk powder used in this recipe may not be something you keep in the house so a River Cottage-style method with actual milk is probably easier. The Guardian’s article on how to make the perfect hot cross bun is also helpful for research purposes.
One tip: I made my cross mixture so stiff it actually tore my fancy icing bag off the tip (durrr) and was a bit too crunchy when cooked, so watch out for that. Then I ran out of piping mix, so some of my last buns had either just a single stripe, or were completely nude, but I called them agnostic and atheist respectively and pretended I’d done it on purpose.
P.S. Hot cross buns may officially be the hardest-to-pronounce foodstuff EVER for Italian Mr. R&R, worse even than haddock (“addok-a”), as the words get all mished up and come out like “otsotchboon”. So cute…
Hot Cross Buns
Adapted from Baking with Passion. Makes 12.
For the buns:
- 1/2 sachet dried yeast (4g)
- 100ml tepid water
- 435g strong white bread flour
- 115ml cold water
- 13g milk powder
- 50g caster sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 40g butter, softened
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 40g chopped candied peel
- 80g currants
For the piping
- 4 level tbsps plain flour
- 1 level tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp water (maybe more)
Prebaking glaze
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp milk
After baking glaze
- 100g sugar
- 50ml water
Make a sponge with the yeast, warm water and 100g of the flour in a large bowl. Leave until noticeably active (1-2 hrs) – risen with lots of bubbles.
Add the rest of the flour, milk powder, sugar, salt, butter and egg to the sponge and then the cold water, mixing to create a soft dough. Knead for about 10 minutes by hand – mine was quite sticky but workable.
Put into a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
On a lightly floured surface, divide the proved dough into 12 equal pieces (I think mine were 220g each but weigh to be sure) and shape each into a round. Arrange about 3/4 of an inch apart on a baking tray lined with parchment, so that as they rise again they will just start to grow into each other. Leave for the final proof (or is that prove?) for another hour or so until again doubled in size.
Meanwhile preheat the oven to 250˚C and make the piping glaze by mixing together the flour, sugar and water (don’t make it too stiff though else it’ll be crunchy on baking) and filling a piping bag with a medium nozzle. When the buns are well risen, make a narrow dent in the shape of a cross in each with something blunt – the back of a knife or a skewer. You don’t want to puncture the surface of the dough, just give the cross something to hold onto. Brush the egg glaze all over the buns. Then pipe the cross shapes into the prepared dents – if your buns have joined together, you can do this in satisfyingly long pieces, following the contours of the hillocks and valleys.
Bun(g) in the oven for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped underneath. Cool on wire racks and meanwhile heat the sugar with the water in a small saucepan until boiling, and then brush this final glaze over the buns.
