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Bath Buns
Put one pound of flour into a pan, and make a hole in the centre, into which pour one table-spoonful of yeast and one cupful of milk, slightly warmed. Mix these together with a little of the flour, and leave it near the fire to rise. Dissolve six ounces of butter, and beat up four eggs; add this to the sponge, and knead all together. The dough must be again allowed to rise; and when it has well risen, which will be in about an hour, put small balls of this mixture on a well-greased oven-tin two or three inches apart. This dough being light, it will fall into the required shape. Sprinkle loaf sugar on the top, or brush the buns over with a mixture of egg and milk. Five or six caraway comfits and lemon-or citron-peel may be added. Bake in a moderate oven.
A Georgian-style enriched dough of the plainest kind — no sugar in the crumb at all, the sweetness supplied entirely by what goes on top. The proportions are rich enough that the dough behaves more like a thick batter than a bread dough.
- The hinge: a slack dough is correctSix ounces of butter and four eggs to a pound of flour gives a dough too soft to shape by hand, which is why the recipe says it "will fall into the required shape." Spoon or scoop rough mounds; chilling the risen dough for 20 minutes makes handling easier without changing the result.
- YeastA tablespoon of yeast here means liquid barm or fresh brewer's yeast. Use about 7 g (2¼ tsp) instant or active dried yeast, or roughly 20 g fresh, mixed into the warmed milk.
- "One cupful of milk"A Victorian cupful was not a standardised measure; read it as roughly 8 fl oz / 240 ml. Warm it to blood heat only — hot milk poured onto flour and yeast will kill the ferment.
- Sponge and second riseThe first stage is a sponge: let it bubble and dome, roughly 30–45 minutes in a warm room. After the butter and eggs go in, the hour given for the second rise is realistic; fat slows fermentation noticeably.
- Moderate oven350–375°F (180–190°C). Small buns need 12–18 minutes; they colour fast because of the egg wash and the sugar on top.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold in hard cones and broken up for use, so "loaf sugar" sprinkled on top means coarse crushed lumps. Pearl or nib sugar is the closest modern equivalent; granulated will dissolve and disappear.
- Caraway comfitsCaraway seeds individually coated in layers of hard sugar, a long-established sweetmeat still sold in the nineteenth century but now hard to buy. Substitute a scant teaspoon of caraway seeds, or leave them out and rely on the citron and lemon peel.
- YieldThe quantity of dough will make a dozen or more buns, depending how small the balls are. They are best eaten warm, and like most enriched buns are better fresh than kept.
Bath buns take their name from the spa city, where the fashionable drinking of the waters in the eighteenth century supported a trade in rich breakfast breads — the Sally Lunn belongs to the same town and the same habit. Their invention is often attributed to Dr William Oliver, the Bath physician also credited with the Bath Oliver biscuit, though this is traditional rather than documented. The caraway comfits and candied citron in this version are the older, Georgian character of the bun; the crushed sugar scattered over the top is the survival of an era when sugar came as a hard loaf to be broken with nippers rather than as a free-flowing granule.