I was having my hair cut today at Ginger Lilly in Kenilworth, and chatting to Annie. Going there and catching up makes one feel really great, this is in addition to have a great hair cut! We were chatting about baking, and Annie was really pleased that one of her friends was now following with interest, my baking, and, in particular my Panettone recipe on this blog.
As one does, I went back to one of my favourite bread books: Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley for this weekend's buns. I notice he has a second book out, but the library does not have this. I wonder what amount of overlap there is between the two.
For my weekend buns, I turned to his Hot Cross Bun Recipe and made them a little my own by varying the fruit, substituting chopped dried apricots and crystallised citrus peel for some of his raisins, and adding some mace, but kept to everything else, except for being 'uncrossed' . With it being so cold, I balance the ferment on top of a jumper close by the radiator, and again when I had mixed the dough, made sure it was not left in the cool kitchen.
Andrew Whitley's recipes are really well explained, with lovely small paragraphs with explanations which stay with you. Many of them use wholemeal flour as a rule, but these have a little less that 1/2 white.
I weighed out the dough to get the 16 x 75g buns, and allowed them to rise in their own time. When they were baked, I turned to one of Andrew's suggested glazes, and used the cream and honey glaze, but substituted mace for his nutmeg, finding mace a warmer and more gentle flavour and smell. Having made so many, most of them went into the freezer. A couple of days later, I took some out, and when thawed reheated them, they were delicious and the glaze remained shiny and did not scorch.
This recipe is the best I have used for a bun....
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