Hot Cross Buns

After finishing the Rye, Caraway and Raisin loaf, I felt ready to try another fruited bread. We’re only a couple of weeks away from Easter. Hot Cross Buns.

I followed the ingredients list here, but used the manual sweet dough preparation technique from Dough. It can be difficult to keep all of the dried fruit incorporated into the dough but hold your nerve – as the dough’s going through its first proof, the fruit will soften and adhere to the dough more readily, and as it expands it’ll all fit into place.

After the first rise, the dough is divided into 20 and shaped into spheres, and placed, touching, in the bottom of a deep baking tray, followed by an egg wash.

The second rise gets another egg wash, by which point the buns have expanded to squash into each other. Then a flour, water and oil paste is piped over the top of the buns. Mine was a bit too runny…

…meaning that the buns looked a little rustic.

They came out OK though.