I've got a current project where I select a bookmark on my phone and do something with it (as opposed to leave it there and do nothing). I talked about it last week here,
So I had to do a new one this week and as it's nearly Easter I chose.... sourdough hot cross buns! Here's the link I'm using
Don't they look amazing?
Ben and I discovered sourdough last year when I read about how easy it was in this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall book.
Basically you need flour and water. That's it! We have our very own starter that we pretentiously named Marjorie and we feed her with spelt flour and we love her very much.
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| She may not be a looker but by criminy she makes excellent bread. |
We often make a loaf and eat it while making inappropriately orgasmic noises, so I thought we should try a variation.
I love hot cross buns.
I should qualify that. I love my mum's homemade hot cross buns.
The shop bought ones, even fancy ones from marks and spencer, always seem a bit light and tea-cakey rather than crusty and bready. I also dislike eating them when it isn't Easter. I may eat one or two beforehand to check a batch or a couple afterwards to get them eaten, but that isn't normally an issue...
The joy of hot cross buns is to eat them at home, toasted and smothered in good quality butter accompanied by a big mug of tea. Mmmmm..... butter....
The joy of hot cross buns is to eat them at home, toasted and smothered in good quality butter accompanied by a big mug of tea. Mmmmm..... butter....
Er... where was I?
Right, baking.
Given the above, I have pretty high standards for hot cross buns and I'd never mastered them to my satisfaction. I was super excited to try the sourdough ones and, it turns out, I was delighted with the results. Of course I had to amend the recipe a little, it's a running joke in our house that I never do any recipe exactly as it says, I always have to tweak it a wee bit. The only 3 changes here were to use Mackesons milk stout rather than Guinness as I find it has a sweeter flavour for cooking, sultanas rather than raisins and substituting some of the mixed peel for crystallised ginger because it's delicious.
Having only made a very simple sourdough loaf from the book above, I wasn't too confident with the whole stretching and folding technique in the recipe, but I'm pretty happy with how this went.
Not bad eh?
Then the laborious step of portioning out the buns. Weighing each one was new to me, I normally just guess (are we seeing why I'm maybe not the most consistent baker?) and I can't deny, these are much more even than any rolls or buns I've made before.
I couldn't get them all on one tray so I had to cook them in 2 batches but the proving times in sourdough are long and flexible so that was fine.
Once proved I had to pipe on the crosses. I only recently discovered I could pipe at all. I thought it was me, but it turns out having a crappy piping set and bag is why I couldn't before...
It turned out ok. Messy, but ok.
It turned out ok. Messy, but ok.
After baking they looked like this and are bloody delicious.
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| I only sampled one, just to test the batch! |
So now they're in the freezer, we have delicious hot cross buns for Easter and I've copied the recipe into my beautiful book.
That's another bookmark deleted, I wonder what will be next...
Love and kisses
H.
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