mad about baking

For everyone who is not British: Hot Cross Buns are the Easter treat in Britain. You’ll find them in every last supermarket. Traditionally eaten only at Easter, they are now available pretty much all year round. However, the smell of the spicy buns coming from the oven is such a treat, so give it a go and make them yourself! The recipe below is made by the ‘Ferment & Dough’ method, which allows the yeast ideal conditions to grow before being mixed together with the butter, spices, salt etc, all of which reduce the yeast activity.

Preparation

Ingredients - Ferment

• 25g sugar
• 25g yeast
• 270g water
• 105g wholemeal flour

Ingredients - Dough

• 55g wholemeal flour
• 365g strong bread flour
• 15g Skimmed Milk Powder
• 60g Butter
• 50g Sugar
• 50g Egg (1 medium)
• 5g Salt
• 10g Mixed Spice
• 55g Sultanas
• 105g Currents
• 25g Mixed Peel

Method

1. For the ferment, dissolve yeast in water and add and dissolve the sugar. Stir in the flour to form a smooth batter, cover and leave in a warm place for 30-40 min until nicely risen and starting to collapse.
2. Sieve together the flours for the dough together with the salt and milk powder.
3. Put in a mixing bowl and rub in the butter by hand or with a beater on slow speed.
4. Mix together the egg, sugar and spice and add to the mixing bowl together with the ferment.
5. Mix with dough hook for 2min on slow speed and 6 min on second speed. By hand this will take about 10 - 15min.
6. Leave in a covered bowl to bulk ferment for 40min, then knead in the fruit by hand. Return to the bowl and cover for a further 20min.
7. Divide into 60g doughpieces and mould round by pressing with hand on the doughpiece cupping your fingers around it and moulding it round in circular movements. Rest for 10min then re-mould briefly to tighten up the dough.
8. Line up the buns on a tray, leaving some space to expand. Cover with a plastic sheet (i.e. carrier bag) and prove for about 40 min in a warm place until nicely risen.
9. In the meantime, prepare a smooth batter for the crossing from 50g plain flour, 1 g baking powder, 1g salt, 10g butter and 55g milk. Stir all together until smooth and fill into a plastic feezer bag.
10. When the buns have finished proving, cut a small opening into one corner of the freezer bag and pipe across the top of the buns in lines from left to right and top to bottom of the baking tray.
11. Bake at 230C for 10 - 15min.
12. On removal from the oven, brush the hot buns with a mixture of 50g milk, 10g sugar and 10 g egg (all whisked together), which will give the buns a lovely shine.
13. Serve with butter and jam. They taste great cut open and toasted as well!
14. Enjoy!

A nice and easy sourdough bread to start you off with. It’s a mixture of rye and malted flour (sold in the UK as ‘Malthouse’, ‘Granary’ or ‘Harvester’ flour). You will need to produce a starter culture and a production sourdough before you can start.

Preparation

Ingredients

• 175g Sourdough
• 75g Rye Flour
• 160g Malted Flour
• 3g Salt
• 100g Water

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients to a smooth dough. In a mixer this will take about 5-6 minutes, longer if mixing by hand. The dough will be quite sticky. If you mix by hand you could use a little oil on the work surface and your hands to make mixing easier.
2. Shape the dough into a ball and put smooth side down into the bowl lined with the tea towel. The towel needs to be well floured, so the dough doesn’t stick to it.
3. Cover the surface of the dough with a little flour and then cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for about 2-3 hours.
4. The dough is ready to go in the oven when it is well risen but still has a little resistance when you touch it.
5. Turn the loaf upside down onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for about 35 minutes. Tap on the bottom to see if it sounds hollow. If it does, it is ready to come out of the oven.
6. Cool on a wire rack and don’t cut open until completely cool.

OK, you’ve hopefully made a nice active sourdough starter, next you need to make the actual sourdough or ’sour’ for short. The sour is the basis on which your actual sourdough bread dough are based. With the one sourdough you can make an endless variety of breads. So here goes:

Preparation

Ingredients

• 40g Sourdough Starter
• 120g Rye Flour
• 240g Warm Water

Method

1. Mix all ingredients together, either with a mixer or by hand. It is not necessary to mix the dough intensely, as there is no gluten development as with wheat flour.
2. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for about 18 hours (plus/minus a few hours should be fine)
3. Voila - this is you sourdough and you can use it for any sourdough breads you like.

Conny’s Tip

You can use any rye flour you like, light or dark (wholemeal). I use Dove’s Farm organic wholemeal which works really well.

Ever wanted to try your hand at a sourdough bread, but thought it was to complex or time-consuming? Well, it isn’t. True, it will take a few days to get it going, but it won’t really need much attention and it only takes a couple of minutes to do the initial feeding. I actually think it’s easier to make a sourdough rye than a white yeast-raised loaf. So give it a go and be amazed!

The sourdough starter is the first stage in producing sourdough bread. The second stage is the actual sourdough and the last the bread dough. Once you’ve got a good starter going the other two stages are childsplay (well, almost).

Preparation

Ingredients

• 80g Wholemeal Rye Flour (I use Doves Farm)
• 160g Water (warm but not hot)
• 1 tsp natural untreated honey

Method

1. Day 1: Mix 20g of the flour, 40g of the water and the honey in your plastic container. It is not necessary to mix it really well, the natural yeasts will do that for you. Cover and leave in a warm place for 24 hour.
2. Day 2: Mix in another 20g of flour and 40g of water and stir into the mixture, cover and return to its warm place.
3. Day 3: Repeat as for Day 2. The sour should show some activity by now.
4. Day 4: Repeat as above.
5. Day 5: Tadaa! You should now have a nice sourdough starter which will smell and taste acidic and is ready for the next stage. So, have a go and by the time you’ve got your sourdough starter going, I’ll post the next step in the production process.

Conny’s Tip

Honey contains a lot of natural yeasts, however, the cheap honey in the supermarket is always heat treated, which destroys these yeasts. Incidentally it also destroys a lot of enzymes which are good for you! I keep bees and make my own honey (but I don’t expect you to go that far). The next best thing is to buy some honey from a local beekeeper or a healthfood shop.