Hot Buns

Just time to make March look a little more respectable by slipping this recipe in before we end up in April. I'm not quite sure where this month has gone, really, but this is a nice one to finish it with.

It's a lovely recipe for hot cross buns, as I didn't put the crosses on them I've called them 'hot buns'. I used the recipe from The Dairy Book of British Food, published in 1988 by the now-defunct Milk Marketing Board for 'British Food & Farming Year', apparently.

I'm sure you used to be able to get MMB cookbooks from your milkman - one of the reasons I'm fond of this one is that my mum gave me a copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery when I left home for university many years ago (it's still in print, from these people now). My dad gave me the rather more dashing Len Deighton books. But the dairy one was a good, basic book and its yellow cover still reminds me of my first steps in cooking. They make a nice change: a lot of the recipes are a bit of their time, but they're refreshingly free of all the aspirational lifestyle-y guff that pads out so many of today's cookery books.

Anyway, that's enough blather - here's the recipe. It's pretty much as given in the book, except that I included sultanas instead of currants (as our two kids prefer them) & left out the chopped peel (as our two really don't like it). I also cut down the salt - the original recipe calls for a teaspoon.

Here's what you'll need:

1.5 tsp dried yeast (or 15g fresh)
300ml lukewarm milk
450g strong white bread flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50g caster sugar
50g butter
80g sultanas
1 egg, beaten

For crosses:
50g plain flour
25g butter

For the glaze:
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp caster sugar

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. If, like me, you're using dried yeast, then sprinkle it & mix into the milk with about 1 tsp of the sugar & leave it for 10-15 minutes somewhere warm.

Put the flour, salt, spices & sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter into chunks, add it to the bowl, and rub it in. An easy way to do this is to give it a gentle whizz in a mixer. Then add the dried fruit & the peel too, if you're using it.

Make a well in the centre, add the beaten egg & milk and yeast mixture and stir it together until you get quite a soft, sticky dough.

Turn this out onto a well floured surface. I tried this one in the mixer with a dough hook, but it didn't work as well as kneading by hand. So knead it for about 10 minutes until it's soft but not sticky (leaves your hands clean) and it's nice and stretchy. I ended up adding quite a bit of flour as I kneaded.

Put your dough into a clean bowl (big enough for it to double in size), cover with a polythene bag or wet tea towel and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour. It should start like this:



And then double in size to this:



Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead again, this time just for about 3 minutes.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. I am rubbish at this, as you can tell below. I always end up with a noticeable variety of sizes.. Not that it really matters. Then form each piece into a bun shape (try tucking the edges under and then shaping with your hand) and put them on floured baking parchment on a baking sheet with plenty of room for expansion.

Leave for 30 minutes in a warm place, with a polythene bag tented over the top, and they'll roughly double in size:



While they're rising, pre-heat your oven to 190C (gas mark 5).

You can make crosses to turn them into hot cross buns. Rub together the 50g of plain flour & 25g of butter until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Add enough water to bring it together and knead gently. Roll it thinly and cut strips that you can make into a cross shape - wet them slightly on the back to attach them to the top of your buns.

Bake them at 190c (gas mark 5) for 15-20 minutes until they're a nice golden-brown colour.

While they're baking, make the glaze by heating the milk, water and sugar together. So that when they're done you can brush each one as you transfer them to a wire rack for cooling:



I made these last night for breakfast this morning. They were delicious both warm and cold and were very popular indeed.

Baking Day: Rice Bread

This recipe is taken, with a couple of minor tweaks, from Jane Grigson's classic English Food, Grigson herself adapting the recipe given in Elizabeth David in English Bread & Yeast Cookery. It seems to have been very popular in nineteenth century England, as Jane Grigson says: "Lady Llanover said it was by far the best bread for sandwiches, in particular for chicken sandwiches".

We wanted to make this with brown rice, because it's nice and nutritious and our two really like the flavour. And it got a big thumbs up when we gave it to them this lunchtime with some home-made hummus on it. The grown-ups had cheese & mustard sandwiches and now there's hardly any left at all..

But on to the recipe. Here's what you need:

85g (3oz) long grain brown rice (uncooked weight)
8g (1/4 oz) dried yeast (or twice that quantity fresh yeast)
15g (1/2 oz) sea salt
500g (18oz) strong white bread flour

Some olive oil for brushing

The first thing to do is to cook the rice. 85g is about a half cupful. Put this in a pan and add a cup of water. Bring to the boil then cover and cook very gently on your lowest heat for about 40-45 minutes. It may take longer and you might have problems with it sticking to the bottom of the pan, so check it towards the end, stir and add more hot water if necessary.

Some time while the rice is cooking, combine the dried yeast (or twice as much fresh yeast) with a little lukewarm water until it has dissolved.

Measure out the flour and dissolve the salt in about 150ml (1/4 pint) of very hot water in a measuring jug. Add another 100ml of cold water once the salt has dissolved (ie. get 250ml or 8 fl oz of lukewarm water). If you want to use less salt, I'd probably go for about 8-10g.

Add the hot, cooked rice to the flour and fork it in a bit.



Add the salted water and the yeast mixture and combine together until you've got quite a soft, sticky dough. We used the bread hook on our Kenwood and ended up with this:



Cover it over with a polythene bag and leave it somewhere warm for about an hour and a half, until it's doubled in volume. Like this:



Knock it down and knead it gently for about 5 minutes (again, we used the Kenwood). Add more flour if it's too sticky - you want it leaving the bowl clean and so it doesn't stick too much to your fingers.

Next, oil the bottom of a 1.5 to 2 litre bread tin a little and line it with some baking parchment. Brush the inside of this with a little olive oil and tip in the dough, pressing it gently into the sides. Cover with the polythene bag again and leave it somewhere warm until it rises up to the top of the tin. After about a quarter of an hour, pre-heat the oven to 230C (gas 8); after a further quarter of an hour or so it should look like this:



Gently remove the bag and place it in the oven. Cook for 15 minutes at 230C (gas 8), then lower the heat to 200C (gas 6) and cook for a further 15 minutes. Take it out of the tin at this point and then cook it upside down for another 5 minutes. Put it on a rack to cool.

It's a very tasty bread indeed, with a lovely flavour and texture from the rice and a great crust. And it does make great sandwiches - cheese, egg or cold meat would all be equally yummy. The boys said it was v. tasty with hummus and even with some butter and honey.

** Just a little update on this one - we've also made it replacing half of the white flour with strong stoneground wholemeal flour with delicious results. It's possibly even more delicious.

Splat Buns - or Baps to You and Me..

Woops - missed last week, naughty! We did actually make some Barm Brack, but I wasn't particularly happy with how it turned out so didn't bother to blog it. That's one for a bit more experimenting I think.

This week's recipe is from the brilliant Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley. I can't recommend this book highly enough - since reading it I've finally got my head round how making bread actually works. I haven't by any means made every recipe in the book, but the fact that I can now make wheat and rye sourdoughs with ease and have a sourdough leaven happily living in my fridge, makes it worth every penny we paid for it. Can't tell you how my manky, evil-smelling sourdough starters I have thrown away in the past...

This recipe for Baps is also an absolute winner. It never fails - everyone who has tried them has been impressed and there have been many requests for the recipe. So I thought it was about time I got round to it.

Some notes on the recipe:
Whitley suggests using all strong wholemeal flour - we do this sometimes, but we usually white flour too, so that's what I've give quantities for here. We've also tried it with half wholemeal spelt and half strong white flour - this makes delicious baps which rise a little more quickly.

Whitley is very specific about his water temperatures - which is extremely comforting when you are beginning with sourdough, but I haven't found it vital with baps, so I'm not bothering with that here. One more thing - he specifically says that the dough should not be kneaded after it's first rise - but we have found that if it is kneaded fairly thoroughly at that stage (err, thrown around the room - why do you think we call them splat buns?) it actually seems to give the baps a much better final texture.

Splat Buns (Baps) based on a recipe by Andrew Whitley

5g dried yeast
390g lukewarm water
300g stoneground strong wholemeal flour
300g strong white flour
5g salt
30g butter, lard or olive oil

Put the lukewarm water in a large bowl (or your food mixer bowl), add the dried yeast and stir it around with your fork to dissolve it. Add the flour, the salt and fat (we always use farmouse butter from Westry Roberts - gorgeous stuff). Knead (or use your mixer) until, as Whitley puts it 'the gluten [is] properly developed' - that is until the mixture is no longer very sticky, and springs back when you poke it.

Then cover your mixing bowl with a damp cloth (another Whitley no-no - but it works for me...) and put it in a warmish place for 1-2 hours. Towards the end of that period get some flour ready in a small bowl, flour your work surface a little bit, and get a baking tray ready (just lined with baking parchment/sprinkle with flour).

Then get the dough and bang it around a bit (it helps to get some help from small children at this stage, but it's not vital) and divide it into 12 equal-ish sized pieces. Mould each piece into a ball, pulling the dough round tightly to form a smooth rounded top and then dip them in a little flour before putting them on the baking tray, about 2cm apart (see picture).

Then put the whole tray in to a large carrier bag (Bag for Life again), making sure that the buns are in no danger of touching the bag, even after they've risen. Put this into a warm place for the buns to rise for about 30-45 minutes.

Sometime during this period pre-heat your oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8 - (it really depends on how long it takes your oven to do this - it'll become second nature). When the buns have risen so that they are just touching each other - see picture - put them in the oven for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 210C/Gas 7 for a further 7-12 minutes.

When you're happy that they're done, remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Hope you enjoy these baps as much as we do. If you want to see Whitley's original recipe then it here on Google Books. There's also a recipe for overnight baps (which have an even better flavour & are more easily digested) included here in his article Let's Have Some Decent Bread in Resurgence Magazine.