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Bath Buns
Mix one-half teaspoon of salt, one-half cup of sugar and one-half teaspoon of grated nutmeg with four cups of flour; scald one cup of milk, add one-fourth cup of butter, dissolve one-half yeast cake in one-fourth cup of lukewarm water. When milk is luke-warm, add yeast and three eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately; then add flour, keeping dough soft so it can be handled; knead twenty minutes. Let it rise over night in a warm place. In the morning roll out and rub lightly with butter, fold over and over, cut in pieces size of an egg, and mold into balls; press into each a block of sugar dipped in lemon juice, and also a piece of citron. Let rise in baking tins. Brush with egg diluted with water, and bake one-half hour. When baked brush with sugar dissolved in water.
— Miss Margaret Robinson Hall
A rich, lightly laminated overnight yeast bun. Two things in the original need translating before you start: the yeast measurement and the overnight rise, which was written for a much cooler kitchen than most people have now.
- Half a yeast cakeYeast cakes were small blocks of compressed fresh yeast; the familiar modern cake is 0.6 oz, though sizes varied over time. On that basis half a cake is in the region of a teaspoon of active dry yeast, or about half a standard packet. Modern dry yeast is likely to move the dough along faster than the receipt expects, so watch it rather than the clock.
- The overnight rise"A warm place" overnight with modern yeast will overproof this dough and leave it slack and sour by morning. A cool room, or better a covered bowl in the refrigerator, gives the long slow fermentation the recipe is actually after; take it out an hour or so before shaping.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, as was normal when ranges had no thermometers. A moderate oven, somewhere around 350-375F, suits buns of this richness. Half an hour is long for pieces the size of an egg — start checking at 18 minutes and pull them when they are deep gold and sound hollow.
- Scalding the milkScalding is usually explained as denaturing whey proteins in raw milk that weaken gluten. With pasteurized milk it is generally treated as unnecessary for that purpose, and here serves mainly to melt the butter and warm the liquid; heat it to just steaming, then let it cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or the yeast will be killed.
- Block sugarA "block" is a lump of loaf sugar, roughly today's sugar cube. Dipped in lemon juice it half-dissolves in the oven and leaves a sweet, slightly tart pocket in the crumb — the defining feature of the bun, and worth not skipping.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks around the winter holidays and often shelved with baking supplies. Candied orange or mixed peel is the usual substitute; chop it small so it does not tear the dough.
- KneadingTwenty minutes is a hand-kneading time for an enriched dough. In a stand mixer with the dough hook, 8 to 10 minutes on medium-low will develop the same windowpane. Keep the dough soft as instructed — resist adding flour past what it takes to handle.
- The butter foldRolling out, buttering and folding "over and over" is a rough lamination, which is what gives these buns their flaky pull rather than a plain bread crumb. Keep the butter soft but not melted, and do not press the layers flat when you shape the balls.
- YieldFour cups of flour at egg-sized pieces gives about 16 to 18 buns. The final sugar-and-water brush should go on while they are hot so it dries to a thin glaze.
Bath buns take their name from the spa city in Somerset, where they were sold to visitors taking the waters from at least the eighteenth century; the invention is often credited by tradition to the physician William Oliver, who is more securely connected with the plain Bath Oliver biscuit. What distinguishes the bun from its plainer relatives is the crushed or lump sugar worked into and scattered over the dough, and the candied peel — luxuries that mark it as a treat rather than daily bread. That an English spa-town bun turns up under "Village Receipts" in a Catskill church-and-community cookbook is typical of the genre: these books collected whatever their contributors made well, and English baking arrived in American kitchens through printed cookbooks and family memory alike. The instruction to scald the milk, the yeast cake, and the absence of any oven temperature all date the receipt to a kitchen with a wood or coal range and a milkman rather than a refrigerator.