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Currant Buns--Chelsea Buns. Washington Buns
Hot for supper. No eggs required. Favorite sort and quickly made. This makes 45. 4 pounds of light bread dough. 8 ounces of currants. 8 ounces of softened butter. 8 ounces of sugar It is soon enough to begin these 2 hours before supper. Take the dough from the rolls at say 4 o'clock. Spread it out, strew the currants over and knead them in Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch sheet. Spread the butter evenly over it and the sugar on top of that Cut in bands about as wide as your hand Roll them up like roly-poly puddings. Brush these long rolls all over slightly with a little melted lard so that the buns will not stick together in the pans. Then cut off in pieces about an inch thick. Place flat in a buttered pan, touching but not crowded. Rise nearly an hour. bake 15 minutes. Brush over with sugar and water. Dredge sugar and cinnamon over.
A bakery formula that assumes you already have risen bread dough on hand; the whole thing hinges on working the butter and sugar in as a rolled-in layer rather than mixing them into the dough.
- The dough"4 pounds of light bread dough" means plain risen white bread dough, roughly a batch made from 2 1/2 lb (about 9 cups) flour plus water, yeast, salt and a little sugar. "Take the dough from the rolls" means pinching off part of a batch of roll dough already made up; the recipe does not say at what stage of its rising. A home baker can scale down proportionally to a single 2 lb batch and get about 22 buns.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Dried currants are widely sold; plump them briefly in warm water and pat dry if they are stiff, since dry fruit pulls moisture from the crumb.
- No oven temperature givenThe book gives none, and no oven term to work from either. A 15-minute bake suggests a fairly hot oven; something in the region of 400-425F is a reasonable modern equivalent. Watch the bottoms, as the sugar layer can leak and caramelise against the pan.
- The butter must be soft, not melted"Softened butter" spread on a 1/4-inch sheet means paste consistency. Melted butter soaks into the dough and you lose the layering that gives Chelsea buns their spiral.
- Bands "as wide as your hand"About 4 inches, cut across the sheet, then rolled up the short way so each band becomes a long log. Cutting at an inch thick gives the flat coil that is set cut-side down in the pan.
- The lard brushBrushing the logs with melted lard before slicing keeps the buns from fusing as they expand. Neutral oil or melted butter does the same job.
- Touching but not crowdedThe buns are set just touching in the pan and swell together during the final hour's rise, which is what keeps the sides soft and forces them upward. A 9x13 pan will take somewhere between a dozen and twenty at this size.
- FinishingThe sugar-and-water wash goes on straight from the oven, while the buns are hot enough to dry it to a shine; the recipe gives no proportions and does not say to boil it. Cinnamon sugar goes on immediately after, before the glaze sets.
- YieldForty-five buns from the full 4 lb of dough, which is a bakery run. Halve or quarter freely.
Chelsea buns take their name from the Chelsea Bun House in London, a shop trading from the early eighteenth century into the 1830s and patronised, by tradition, by Hanoverian royalty; the coiled, currant-studded, sugar-glazed bun it sold became the standard form. What is striking in this American book is the shrug of the three interchangeable names in the title "Currant Buns--Chelsea Buns. Washington Buns" which tells you the shape mattered more than the pedigree. The method is pure bakeshop economy: no separate sweet dough, no eggs, just a piece pulled off the roll batch and enriched at the last minute with butter and sugar rolled in. The timing is given by the clock rather than by feel, two hours before supper, dough at four.