Buns

Another go at hot cross buns without the cross yesterday.

Started the yeast in warm sugar and water rather than cold sugar and milk and it was frothing nicely after 5 minutes or so. Much more rising action during both the first rise in lump form of around 2 hours and the second rise in bun form of around 1 hour - but the the second effort still ended up looking more like the first effort than I had expected given all that rising action. But they were bigger and they were more fluffy - although I am having the same problem as I have with white bread, in that I am not matching the crumb texture of the better shop products. I think I am just going to have to live with that - until the unlikely event of my going on one of those bread making courses that arty bakers put on in their rural retreats. (Probably a lot more money in running social opportunities for bore housewives and grey hairs than there is in flogging bread, however arty).

The colour gradient from left to right is an artefact of the telephone and the lighting. They didn't really look like that.

Also continued to have trouble with the dried fruit falling out of the dough through all stages of construction. It is odd the way that the dried fruit does not seem to make real contact with the dough; it might have been inside but it fall out easily enough, as clean as when it went in, Unlike my fingers which get covered with sticky dough.

Next go will be to make a hot cross loaf: one round loaf in my usual pizza plate (a fake stone job from Lakeland), rather than 12 buns. If nothing else, it will mitigate the problem with the dried fruit.

After that I might start to explore the extensive range of variations in our Radiation New World Cookery book - far more stuff on yeast buns there than in any of our other, chef, shop or product orientated cook books. Mostly chef I think. Yeast buns which range from bread with fruit all the way through to cake with fruit - the common denominator being the use of yeast rather than baking powder as a rising agent. We wondered, while consuming all but one of yesterday's buns, whether yeast was more readily available to the 19th century rural housewife - or indeed baker - than baking powder.