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Hot Cross Buns
Mix two pounds of flour with a small tea-spoonful of powdered spice and half a tea-spoonful of salt. Rub in half a pound of good butter. Make a hollow in the flour, and pour in a wine-glassful of yeast and half a pint of warmed milk slightly coloured with saffron. Mix the surrounding flour with the milk and yeast to a thin batter; throw a little dry flour over, and set the pan before the fire for it to rise. When risen, work in a little sugar, one egg, half a pound of currants, and milk to make a soft dough. Cover over as before, and let it stand half an hour. Then make the dough into buns, and mark them with the back of a knife. Time, fifteen to twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 1d. each. Sufficient for twenty-four buns.
A straightforward Victorian enriched yeast dough, but the quantities assume brewer's barm, a fireside for proving, and a baker who knows what "a little sugar" means. The conversions below cover the gaps.
- The yeastA wine-glassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, and the fact that it is measured by volume suggests liquid barm rather than a compressed cake, though compressed yeast was available by this date. For 2 lb (about 900 g) of flour, use roughly 2 sachets of instant dried yeast, or 1 oz (30 g) fresh yeast slaked in the warm milk.
- Powdered spiceThis is English mixed spice: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, a little clove and coriander. A "small teaspoonful" for 2 lb of flour is restrained by modern taste; 2 to 3 teaspoons gives the flavour most people now expect from a hot cross bun.
- SaffronThe saffron is for colour rather than flavour, but it contributes both. Steep a good pinch of threads in the warmed milk for ten minutes before mixing. Turmeric is sometimes suggested as a substitute and will colour the crumb but tastes nothing like it.
- The sugar"A little sugar" is genuinely unquantified. Victorian buns of this type ran lean; 3 to 4 oz (85 to 115 g) of caster sugar for the full 2 lb of flour is a reasonable reading, and any more will slow the second rise.
- Rising timesSetting the pan before the fire means a warm spot, not a hot one. The sponge needs 30 to 45 minutes in a warm kitchen until visibly bubbled and cracked on top; the enriched dough will want longer than the stated half hour, closer to an hour, and the shaped buns need a further 30 to 40 minutes.
- Oven heatNo oven temperature is given. Fifteen to twenty minutes suits a fairly quick oven, in modern terms roughly 400 to 425F (200 to 220C). The buns are done when the undersides sound hollow.
- Marking the crossThe back of a knife scores a cross into the risen dough, which is the older method and gives a soft, barely visible mark. The white piped cross of flour-and-water paste is a later convention and is not what this recipe intends.
- Glaze and yieldNo glaze is specified. A brush of milk-and-sugar syrup over the buns as they come out is traditional and stops the crust drying. Twenty-four buns from this dough works out at roughly 2.5 oz (70 g) each, smaller than a modern bakery bun.
Spiced, currant-studded buns marked with a cross belong to Good Friday in England, and the association is old enough that the London authorities are traditionally said to have restricted the sale of spiced bread to Good Friday, Christmas and burials in the late sixteenth century, leaving households to bake their own the rest of the year. The saffron here is the interesting survival: saffron was grown in Essex around Saffron Walden into the eighteenth century and long outlasted its cultivation as a colouring for festival breads and cakes in the eastern counties and the West Country, where saffron buns are still made. Cassell's, compiling a general household dictionary for late-Victorian middle-class kitchens, presents the bun as an everyday baking exercise rather than a rite, complete with a costing of a penny each -- the sort of figure a cook could set against the price of buying them from the baker.