welcome friends today we are going to make that quintessentially classic
Easter breakfast bread the hot cross bun and so we're just going to start out
we're gonna get right into it in this bowl I've already got flour and
to that I'm going to add sugar and most of the recipes for this bread are
exactly the same in terms of proportions of flour sugar milk butter where they
sort of really shine and where you see the variation is in the spicing so in
mine I put cinnamon already ground cinnamon that goes in with the flour and
then into this little spice grinder I'm gonna grind the spices that should
always grind fresh and that is cloves allspice berries and this mace now mace
is actually an aryl and it is it is part of the nutmeg seed this this red part
would have actually covered the nutmeg seed it's removed and it's sold
separately has a slightly different taste so that goes in and we're just
going to grind that up so in go the ground spices and then
we're going to shave in some nutmeg
what's the Nutmeg is in the zest of one lemon
now I flip back and forth between lemon and orange depending on what I have in
the house and sometimes when I'm feeling really crazy I'll use both so you could
use either and really that's up to you that becomes part of your flavor profile
now salt and I'm using instant yeast and instant yeast doesn't need to be bloomed
it's got a smaller granule which means that it will absorb the milk faster will
dissolve faster and will actually start working faster and I'm gonna put that on
the other side of the bowl just to please those people that are afraid of
salt and yeast touching which is gonna happen as soon as I put the milk in
anyway now I've got milk it's just about body temperature and I'm gonna crack an
egg into it recipes will vary on this point some
will say to put the egg directly in here I like to mix it into the milk just
because I feel like it incorporates better if you have thoughts on that
please let me know in the comments below so milk straight in this is butter and
I've got the butter kind of mostly melted i flip back and forth on this
point too sometimes I will melt the milk and put it in here and sometimes I will
wait and put butter in as we start kneading and incorporate it that way I
found not a whole lot of difference so we're going to mix this all together
okay so this has come together in a sort of wet ragged mass at this point and I'm
gonna turn off the machine and I'm gonna let it sit for twenty-five or thirty
minutes before we start the kneading process now I know this isn't a true
Otto lies rest and somewhere in France there's a bread baker pulling his hair
out screaming and yelling I know it's not a true Otto lies rest but I find
that even this type of rest makes my buns better at the end so 25 minutes do
nothing so now we start the process of kneading this to a nice smooth elastic
dough and it's at this point you want to add in the fruit so I'm using candied
citrus peel and I'm just using the yellow one if you want to use the
brightly colored Christmas with the red green blue yellow
feel free go right ahead and then you want to add any seedless raisin that you
like I'm using currants because I really like currants but raisins are great and
I've even seen people put in fresh apple I've never tried that myself
so in those go
okay so what we have is a fairly sticky dough there's a lot of milk a lot of
butter and it's kind of it's not quite like the panettone that we made but you
know it's pretty close so normally what I do at this point is just leave it in
this mixing bowl and I just cover it and let it rise until it's about two and a
half times in volume okay doubles in size now no flour on your
bench no flour on your bench dough is going to be sticky and that's kind of
what we're hoping for so get your dough out onto the bench and we're gonna
divide it and each of these twelve balls should be about a hundred grams so it's
gonna stick a little bit don't panic we're sort of counting on that so we're
gonna divide this into twelve now one hundred grams each you can use a scale
and I have one here just for reference and I'll usually weigh one or two and
then just eyeball the rest you can make yourself crazy with a scale trying to
get each of them 100 grams somewhere between 95 and 105 it's all going to be
fine
what's the portion doubt and all essentially about the same size we're
going to use the stickiness of the bench to help us shape and form the dough
balls so you just take your hand you cup it and just rotate it on the counter and
the fact that it's sticking a little bit helps us get that surface tension and
really help us shape it so onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper and
we'll shape the rest exactly the same way and so arranging them on the baking
sheet is a bit of an art form you want them close but not too close you want
them to sort of rise into each other but not touch too much and at this point now
I put a little bit of flour on my hand and just Pat them down a touch just a
touch you just want the flour because they will stick to your fingers now I
just cover them with a piece of plastic wrap and I don't wrap them tightly I
just kind of lay it on top loosely and we'll let these sit on the counter for
about an hour or so until they're almost double in size so we have reached the
totally completely optional part of this recipe and that is the cross if I'm
making them at home for just Julie and I I don't put the cross on I don't really
like fiddling with the flour it doesn't bring anything flavor-wise to the to the
bun at all it's purely a visual thing so if you want to leave it off go ahead if
you want to put it on this is just a slurry of flour and water
so flour water it's fairly thick you should use a piping bag I use a turkey
baster because I hate cleaning piping bags and I refuse to use a plastic bag
and so you just pipe on across
he's what fabulous cross buns very nice conveniently there's a there's a guide
for cutting guide for cutting so I took these out of the oven when the internal
temperature was about 205 degrees Fahrenheit a lot of people don't tell
you about breads and cakes you can tell if they're done by temperature so top
tip 205 degrees internal and then I glazed them with honey but you could use
apricot jam simple syrup any kind of sugary glossy coating for the top mmm
sugary coating gloss mm-hmm so this is a starting-point recipe by all means
switch up the spices there's something that you like mm-hmm you know if you
mace is something that not everybody's gonna have know and if you don't want to
go out and buy mace in order to make this don't don't do you want it to be
sunny well they're in a lot of ways the spicing on this is kind of pumpkin pie
spice Inge say it you don't know it is I mean really it is it's not quite as
pronounced but that's where it is and then the same with the fruit if you want
to switch up the fruit put in other dried fruits if you want them by no
means think that you have to stick to tradition I'm and you know like I said
if you want to leave the crosses off leave the crusts off you could do happy
faces you can do happy faces mm-hmm oh so many things you can put on the top
you can do them in the fall and putting leaves on them all year round I'm no
longer putting leaves on them in the end use pumpkin spice see okay so bye
we'll see you again soon
you