Buns!

09Mar08

Spring is in the air, which usually puts me in the mood for hot cross buns. Little lightly-sweetened rounds of yeasted goodness, flavored with citrus and dried fruit, just bright-tasting little snacks. Yum.

I decided to concoct my own version of the hot cross bun. I had a recipe from Epicurious that I’d used for the past couple of years, but it was not completely satisfying– too sweet, too heavy. Ideally, this would be a rich dough with some sugar, but not a full-on brioche experience. The original recipe treated the buns like a regular enriched bread dough with some extra butter, so I thought I’d try to go one better.

In the end, I combined aspects of three or four different recipes. This picture represents the cookbook area of my kitchen when I am ambitious and working with several recipes:

So, chaos. I decided to combine some of the brioche techniques from Rose Levy Berenbaum with som eproportions from Peter Reinhart, using most of the ingredients from the Epicurious recipe, with some alterations. Without further ado…

Hot Cross Buns (or, Buns of No Particular Religious Symbolism)

Sponge

1½ c. soymilk, warmed to about 100°F (can substitute actual milk)

3 tsp. instant yeast

2 c. all-purpose flour

1 large egg

Combine ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and let sit one hour at room temperature.

Fruit, spices, and dough ingredients

½ c. dried sour cherries, chopped

2 Tbsp. candied orange peel, chopped

2 Tbsp. crystallized ginger, chopped

2 tsp. allspice

½ tsp. cinnamon

zest from one orange and one Meyer lemon (and substitute regular lemon)

2 large eggs

8 Tbsp. butter, softened and cut into 8 pieces

2-3 c. all-purpose flour

1¼ tsp. salt

¼ c. sugar.

Measure and process the fruits and spices. I couldn’t resist taking this photo:

Mix eggs, salt, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and two cups of flour into the sponge with the paddle attachment of the mixer. Add the butter, one piece at a time. As the dough begins to come together, switch to the dough hook. Add flour to the mixture until the dough is sticky but mostly clears the sides of the bowl. Err on the side of a more wet dough– the dough will stick more at first but will clear the sides of the bowl as the mixer kneads the dough.

Add the citrus zests and the fruit, then knead with the dough hook for five to six minutes on a low-medium speed (three on the KitchenAid mixer). The full mixing time may be as much as ten minutes as you fiddle with the flour levels and whatnot.

Once the dough is kneaded, oil a large bowl and put the dough in it, rolling it once to oil the whole surface.

Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for an hour at room temperature. After the hour, refrigerate the dough for one to two hours to let it firm up (this chills the butter in the dough and makes the whole mass a bit more solid). Remove the dough from the refrigerator, deflate the dough by pressing on it (no need to “punch it down, be gentle). On a lightly floured counter, press the dough into a rough triangle. Fold the dough into thirds in the long direction (think of a letter in an envelope), then turn it 90° and fold into thirds in that direction.

Put the dough back into the bowl, oil it, and refrigerate for another hour.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide into bun-sized pieces (I got somewhere between 25 and 30 buns from this recipe). Roll them into spheres and place on the baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone equivalent. Cover and let rise one more hour.

During this hour, preheat the oven to 425°. Once the buns have risen, bake them for 10-15 minutes, until the crust is golden or light caramel brown:

And voilà. The title of this post comes from the exclamation of my friend’s 1½-year-old, who at first cried “Cookies!” when these arrived. Upon being told that they were not cookies but, in fact, buns, he immediately yelled “Buns!” and proceeded to eat them with gusto. Even without a frosted cross on them.

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