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Bath Buns
(England.) Mix 1 pound flour, a tablespoonful of yeast, and 1 cup of milk; let it rise overnight, or for several hours, near the fire; add 6 ounces of melted butter and 4 eggs, well beaten. Knead all, and let it rise again for about an hour. Make into balls as large as a peach, press the tops, and lay in some currants and candied peel. Dust with sugar, and let rise for 10 minutes; bake in moderate oven 3/4 hour.
A rich, slow-fermented enriched dough of the older English kind, written for a cook who knew what a bun should look like. Two numbers in it need adjusting: the yeast and the baking time.
- The baking time is the thing to watchThree-quarters of an hour at moderate heat will dry out peach-sized buns badly. Buns of that size bake in roughly 15-20 minutes at 375F; the long original timing may reflect a slower, cooling brick oven. Pull them when deep gold and hollow-sounding.
- "Moderate oven"350F in the usual reading of these books. For enriched, sugared buns 375F gives better colour and spring in a shorter time.
- A tablespoonful of yeastThis means fresh compressed or barm, not the dried granules on a supermarket shelf. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast for the pound of flour, or roughly 15 g fresh.
- Weights and volumes1 pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; 6 ounces of butter is 1 1/2 sticks. With 1 cup milk and 4 eggs this is a very wet, slack dough — closer to a brioche than a bread dough, and easier in a mixer than by hand.
- The overnight spongeFlour, yeast and milk are set to ferment first, and the butter and eggs go in only afterwards. That order matters: the fat would slow the initial rise considerably. "Near the fire" means warm, not hot — a modern kitchen counter overnight is fine, or the refrigerator for a slower, better-flavoured ferment.
- Currants and peelPressed into the tops rather than kneaded through, as this recipe directs. Exposed fruit scorches, so press it in firmly and expect the peel to darken.
- Dusting with sugarTraditionally crushed lump sugar or coarse nibbed sugar, not caster. Pearl or nib sugar gives the correct crunch; ordinary granulated dissolves into the crust.
- Final proofTen minutes is short even for a warm hearthside. Give the shaped buns 30-45 minutes at room temperature, until visibly puffed and slow to spring back.
- YieldAbout twelve buns at the size described.
Bath buns take their name from the Somerset spa city, where sweet enriched breads were part of the pump-room and breakfast trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are traditionally associated with Dr William Oliver, the Bath physician of Bath Oliver biscuit fame, who is often said to have given his patients buns until he found them fattening and devised the plain biscuit instead — a story repeated everywhere and documented nowhere in his own hand. The bun's real fame is Victorian: enormous numbers were reportedly sold at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and by the time this collection was assembled a "Bath bun" was shorthand across the English-speaking world for a sugar-crusted, fruit-topped, butter-heavy roll. Here it appears labelled simply "(England)".