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Bath Buns (Old English Recipe)
1½ pounds Five Roses flour ¾ pound butter ¾ pound sugar lemon peel (finely chopped) yeast cake (or 2 ounces good liquid yeast) 6 eggs Lemon or vanilla flavoring ¼ pint warm milk (or milk and water) 1 teaspoon salt.
Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk, and make a sponge with 1 pound Five Roses flour. Cover up and let rise for about 15 minutes. Rub the butter into the remainder of the flour. When sponge has risen, break in the eggs and stir well.
Then add the salt, also the flour. Mix all together to a nice dough and set aside to rise well-covered. When well risen, spread the dough out on the board, add the peel, sugar and flavoring. Mix well and mould into buns of about 3 ounces each. Put in well-greased tin and set to rise. Then wash over with beaten egg, sprinkle with a little sugar and bake in moderate oven. --Mrs. W. A. Fraser, Iron Springs, Alta.
A very rich yeast dough — butter and sugar each half the weight of the flour — which means slow rises and a soft, almost brioche-like crumb. The measurements are by weight, which is the easiest part to follow; the vaguer parts are the yeast, the oven and the rising times.
- The hinge: sugar goes in lastThe sugar is deliberately withheld until after the main rise, and it should stay that way. Adding three-quarters of a pound of sugar at the start would slow the yeast badly and slacken the dough; worked in at the end, it dissolves into the crumb and gives the characteristic sticky, sweet patches.
- Weights in cups1½ lb flour is about 5½ cups scooped, ¾ lb butter is 3 sticks, ¾ lb sugar is roughly 1¾ cups. This is a Canadian book, so "1 pint" of milk may mean the imperial 20 fl oz rather than 16; start with 2 cups and add the rest only if the sponge is stiff.
- Yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of this era were commonly around ⅗ oz, roughly one modern packet (2¼ tsp) of active dry or instant yeast, though cake sizes varied and dry yeast cakes were also sold. "2 ounces good liquid yeast" refers to homemade barm or the liquid off a yeast ferment, which has no modern shelf equivalent.
- Moderate ovenGenerally taken as about 350°F, though the term covers roughly 350–375°F. Buns of 3 oz will take 15–20 minutes; the sugar-and-egg glaze browns fast, so check at 12 minutes and tent with foil if they are colouring before they are set.
- The rising times are optimisticFifteen minutes gets a sponge going, not risen — expect 30–45 minutes until it is bubbly and domed. The enriched dough after the eggs and butter will need 1½ to 2 hours to double, and the shaped buns another hour. Judge by the dough, not the clock.
- Lemon peelAmbiguous in the original. Candied peel, finely chopped, is the traditional reading for a Bath bun and gives the fruit through the crumb; fresh zest alone will only perfume it. Either works, but they are different buns.
- YieldAbout 24 buns at 3 oz each — a full baking day's worth. The dough halves cleanly if that is too many.
- The sugar on topTraditionally coarse crushed sugar or nibs rather than fine granulated, which melts away. Pearl sugar or lightly crushed sugar cubes give the crackled top the recipe is reaching for.
Bath buns take their name from the spa city in Somerset, where they were sold to visitors taking the waters from at least the later eighteenth century; the invention is often attributed by tradition to Dr. William Oliver, the same Bath physician credited with the Bath Oliver biscuit, though the connection is repeated more than it is documented. Early versions were studded with caraway comfits, with candied peel and crushed sugar on top becoming standard later. Its appearance here, credited to a contributor in Iron Springs, Alberta, is characteristic of the Five Roses book, which the Lake of the Woods Milling Company assembled from recipes sent in by Canadian women who bought its flour — an English spa-town bun, kept alive by weight-based English measurements, arriving on the prairie as a home-baking staple.