Hi Bold Bakers, I'm Gemma Stafford and this week on Bigger Bolder Baking
we are making a traditional hot cross buns just in time for Easter.
So first off, a big thank you to Mammy Stafford for sharing this recipe
because this is hers, It is tried and true and I absolutely love it.
It's been on biggerbolderbaking.com for a few years now.
So let's start out with our dry ingredients.
In a nice big bowl here, I have some bread flour.
Now, Mammy Stafford always used bread flour.
It's quite traditional in this recipe.
However, I'm not opposed to you using all purpose flour for this.
This is a bun that can be a little bit softer
if you want, so I would say use one or the other and that's up to you.
So into our flour we are going to add in some allspice.
So this is a really common spice at home.
And I actually have a recipe on my website of how you can make it
because it's a little bit harder to find in America.
It's a mix of ginger nutmeg, mace, cinnamon.
It's really delicious.
In a pinch,
I'll let you know that pumpkin pie spice is very similar.
Next, we're going to add a little bit of salt in here and give that a mixy mix.
Gorgeous. Oh, my gosh.
It smells so fragrant and lovely.
Here i have some cold cubed butter.
We're going to add this in and all we're going to do is rub it in with our hands.
So the reason I'm showing you how to make hot cross buns right now
is because Easter is coming up and this is a traditional Easter recipe.
Actually eaten on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter.
In Ireland and around the country, you would see these for sale
in bakeries and supermarkets at that time.
And often you won't see them at other times around the year.
It's just around Easter.
So it is a real treat when you see them come out
and you think like, Oh wow, it's it's hot cross bun time.
Once you rub in your butter
you won't really see it; your flour will kind of look like this.
So next into our flour mixture, we're going to add in our sugar.
And our lemon zest.
You will see a lot of variations on this recipe.
Some people add sultanas, currants, orange.
My mom added in lemon and
so, you know, if you want to put in orange, that's totally fine too.
It just won’t be my mummy's recipe.
Instant yeast; I use instant yeast in this recipe
so you can add it straight into the flour.
So these are our dry ingredients.
Now into this, we're going to add in our tepid ingredients.
Now, we do this because the warmth of the ingredients
will activate the yeast, help it grow, give it all the nice things that it needs.
So let me tell you about tepid or blood temperature milk.
What you want to do is just heat it up in the microwave or on a pan
until it's lukewarm or what I call blood temperature.
And blood temperature means is that if you put your finger in there,
and you can't feel
the liquid around your finger, it means it's the same temperature
as your blood,
which means blood temperature, which is the perfect temperature for yeast.
It loves that. Not too hot, not too cold.
Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Into our milk i'm going to add in an egg.
Give it a mixy mix,
and then into our dry ingredients.
I'm going to hold a little bit back.
If you’ve been watching bigger bolder baking for a long time
you know I always do this when it comes to bread dough, even to pastry.
You know, sometimes everybody's flour is different.
You don't always need it.
So let me just bring it together a little bit
and then I'll see if I need the rest of that ingredients.
I'm going to go ahead and add in the rest of the liquid.
Like most doughs, I like to go in with my hands and just pull it together.
So once my dough comes together like that, look, perfect amount of liquid,
clean bowl. We love this. Nice.
So there’s our dough.
Now turn it over to the countertop, because this is what we're going to do.
We're going to scatter our raisins.
I'm using raisins.
I also love to use golden raisins.
You can use sultanas or currants, whatever.
Scatter them over and then we're going to knead them into the dough just like this.
It just takes a few minutes
and all we want to do is just get all the dried fruit throughout.
So you might be thinking to yourself, hey Gemma,
why don't you just add the raisins into the dry ingredients
and then mix your dough and then turn it out and knead it?
That’s a very good question.
But this is the way my mom did it, and if you want to hop on face
time with my mom
and have her explain to you for 15 minutes why she did that, be my guest.
But I'm just going to do what the recipe says.
So there’s our dough, easy peasy.
So here I'm going to put it in the bowl that we just mixed it in
because I'm not fancy and there's no need to wash it.
I'm going to add in a tiny splash of oil.
We always grease a bowl that has dough rising in it, you know,
because it's always a living thing.
We want to take care of it, want to keep it warm, we want to love it.
And if the bowl is greased, it will just glide up the sides easily.
If it's not, it can struggle a little bit.
We want to make its life as nice as possible for our little ball of dough.
Here we go.
Shower cap, cling wrap, whatever you have.
We're going to set this over to the side at room temperature and let it proof,
and this will take around an hour and a half to 2 hours.
Doughs with spices in it and yeast can be a little bit sluggish.
So we're going to give it a little bit more time.
So I'm going to say 2 hours.
So here we go.
It has been 2 hours.
It has risen up a lot.
And if I put my finger into it, see how it's a bit puffy?
This is great. Like I said, it is a little bit sluggish.
You're not going to see it get like super huge.
We're going to turn it out onto our countertop.
So now here's what we're going to do.
We're going to divide this into 12
even pieces around three and a half ounces each if you have scales.
And if you'll notice, I am not putting flour on my countertop
because I want there to be friction when we're rolling our dough.
And if there's flour, it'll make the rolls slip.
It’ll make them very difficult to shape.
So no flour.
So there we go.
These are looking great, as even as they're going to be.
Here I have a baking tray nine by 13 inches.
It has been greased already.
So now I'm going to just roll our dough into balls.
So here we have a piece of dough.
They're going to be all different sizes. Here's what we're going to do.
Tuck the scraggly bits underneath.
Go in with your hand like a C shape.
Push it into the counter.
It'll start to pop back into your hand and become nice and smooth.
Go round and around
until you get the perfect ball.
And then look at this. Underneath you have a little bit of a crinkle.
But that's okay. It's underneath. You won’t see that.
Now just do that to the rest of them.
Around certain holidays often people
ask me about traditions that we have in Ireland,
and when I was growing up in the eighties and in the nineties,
there was no such thing as Easter Egg hunts; like that did not exist.
I'd never heard of that.
I knew it was an American thing, but like something that we never did.
What we used to do was like, wake up on Easter
morning and the Easter Bunny would have come
and we didn't have different types of candies.
You would just have chocolate eggs and then you would count up
all your chocolate eggs and compare them to your brothers
and your sisters and everything.
And it was really fun.
But an Easter egg hunt didn't become a thing
in Ireland, I think, until like recent years.
When your buns are rolled,
pop them into your prepared pan in a line of four by three.
Cover up your pan again.
So now let's set this over to the side in a nice warm spot
in your kitchen for 60 to 90 minutes.
During this time,
they will rise up,
they will proof into each other and then they'll be ready to go into the oven.
So it's been an hour and a half.
These are looking good.
They've puffed up and they're nice and soft.
Just before they go into the oven I'm going to egg wash them all over
just to make them lovely and golden brown coming out of the oven.
Okay, lovely.
Now let's get these guys into the oven.
Baker your hot cross buns at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200
degrees Celsius for roughly 20 minutes, or until a lovely, rich golden brown.
While our
buns are in the oven let's make our icing really fast.
In my bowl here I have some powdered sugar.
And then into this I'm going to add in a little bit of milk.
I'm going to give it a whisk.
This needs to be nice and thick so we can pipe it; just like this.
However, if yours is too runny, add more sugar.
If it's too thin, add more milk.
That's all it is. Super simple.
Let's set this over to the side until we're ready for it.
Our buns are a lovely golden brown, so let's get them out of the oven.
When they're hot from the oven, I brush them with a little bit of warmed
honey.
This makes them lovely and sticky on top and adds a little bit extra sweetness.
Now, our last final touch.
Once they have cooled down a little bit, we're going to pipe our icing on top.
We do a cross, which is the traditional look of these hot cross buns.
Just the look of these makes me very happy.
They are so gorgeous.
Enjoy them while they're fresh.
So cut them open and slather them with butter.
And of course, in Ireland you have to have them with a cup of tea.
Just like home.
Buttery; has a lovely warmth from the spices and
the raisins; the yeasted dough.
I adore a rich yeasted dough like this. This
is heaven.
To me this is my Irish comfort food right here.
I hope you enjoyed watching this just as much as I enjoyed making it.
Now get into the kitchen and try it for yourself.
I'll see you back here really soon for more bigger, bolder baking.
I'm going to finish off this bun. I'm gonna eat the sticky part.
Oh my gosh.
Heaven, heaven, heaven.