Hot Cross Buns

Peter gets quite a bit of mileage out of the panettone dough here. Most hot cross buns I've had before are essentially spiced bread with fruit - my wife called them 'hamburger buns' recently. These are completely different. Because of the enriched panettone dough (lots of butter and egg yolks), they are small, fairly dense, and quite rich tasting. Closer in fact to fruit scones than hamburger buns.

They're very tasty. However, they're not for the faint of heart. Doing them as Peter lays out in the recipe (which also works for Stollen, Greek Celebration bread and Panettone), takes 3 days and requires a sourdough starter (which is a whole other story). Thankfully, however, they don't need the 12 hour rise he recommends for panettone - just 1 hour is all you need.

If you take the plunge, don't worry if they don't seem to rise during the 1 hour proofing stage. I was skeptical myself and actually did a test batch at 2 hours and 6 hours, with no real difference in rising or crumb between them. They puff up a little during baking.

I made this recipe for Easter as well. Everyone in the family loves Hot Cross Buns, so I couldn’t wait to try this recipe. Having made Panettone before, I knew I would be in for 45 minutes of hard core hand mixing, but in the end it was worth the effort.

When finished mixing, I portioned the dough into 3 oz. portions. This makes 12 Hot Cross Buns. The recipe says to let them sit at room temperature until they begin to swell for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes nothing happened. After 60 minutes still nothing happened. It took almost 2 hours for the dough to swell, but after being baked they rose and looked perfect.

After tasting the Hot Cross Buns, they tasted fantastic, but I don’t think the white fondant glaze was enough sweetness. Perhaps next time I will glaze them a sugar glaze like in the Danish recipe. I have not really had Hot Cross Buns before, I so I can’t compare them to traditional ones, but I think I would like them to be sweeter.

Also, the recipe says to use raisins or currants and one family member commented that currants would be better than raisins, so next time I will try this recipe with currants.

The Buns were still delicious and I will make this recipe many times in the future.