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English Hot Cross Buns
Sift into a large bowl one full quart of flour; one-half cup of sugar and one-half teaspoon of salt; dissolve one-fourth cup of butter in a generous one-half pint of warm milk in which has been dissolved three-fourths of a yeast cake and add to the dry ingredients, with the yolks of two beaten eggs, beaten stiff. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth, place it where it will keep warm, and let it rise over night. In the morning take pieces of the dough the size of an egg, and, with a little flour, mold them into round cakes one inch in thickness. Place them on a buttered tin, leaving a little space between them. Cover the tins and set in a warm place for the buns to rise; they should be double their original size. With a sharp knife cut a cross in the center of each bun. Bake them in a moderate oven for about one-half hour. When the buns are baked, brush the top with a syrup made of sugar and water. A cup of dried currants may be added.
A straightforward overnight sweet dough, measured by volume in the style of 1911. Two things need translating before you start: the flour measure and the yeast.
- A quart of flourFlour was sold and measured by volume; a quart is 4 cups, roughly 1 lb or 500 g of all-purpose. You may want to hold back half a cup and add it only if the dough needs it; it should be soft but kneadable.
- A generous half-pint of milkOne cup, plus a spoonful or two. "Warm" here means blood temperature, around 100-110F; melt the butter into the milk first and let the mixture come down to that range before the yeast goes in.
- Three-fourths of a yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the period varied in size; the common small cake was about 0.6 oz, which makes three-quarters of one roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast.
- The overnight rise"Where it will keep warm" meant near a banked range. In a modern kitchen a plain room-temperature counter, 65-70F, is closer to what that dough actually experienced. A genuinely warm spot will overproof it by morning.
- Yolks beaten stiffYolks will not go stiff; the phrasing is loose for beaten thick and pale. The two whites are left over — they are not used anywhere in the recipe.
- Cutting the crossThe instruction to slash fully proofed buns will deflate them if the knife drags. Use a razor or a very sharp blade, a single quick stroke each way, and no more than 1/4 inch deep. The common alternative is to pipe a cross of thick flour-and-water paste on before baking, which holds its shape better.
- A moderate ovenConventionally somewhere around 350-375F; the book gives no temperature. Half an hour is right for buns of this size; they are done at an internal temperature of about 190F, or when the undersides are firm and browned.
- The syrup glazeThe recipe gives no proportions; a simple syrup of roughly equal parts sugar and water, brushed on while the buns are still hot, sets glossy rather than sticky. Do this the moment they leave the oven.
- Yield and seasoningEgg-sized pieces from this quantity give about 14 to 16 buns. Note that no spice is called for — if you want the cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and candied peel most people now expect in a hot cross bun, they must be added with the currants.
Hot cross buns are tied to Good Friday in England, where the crossed spiced bun was sold by street criers well before the nineteenth century and was for a time restricted by law to Good Friday, Christmas and burials — a detail usually traced to a Tudor-era ordinance and often repeated without a firm citation. Folk belief held that Good Friday buns would not go mouldy and could be hung in the kitchen through the year against illness. What is striking about this version is how plain it is: written for an American home cook in the 1910s, it keeps the shape and the cross but treats the spice and the currants as optional, which is how a seasonal religious bread becomes simply a breakfast roll called "English." The dough is a straight overnight rise rather than a sponge, raised with compressed yeast — the perishable fresh cake that was the standard leaven of the period.