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Sheep-Shearing Buns
(England.) Made in the time of sheep-shearing in the country. Boil 1 pint of milk, add 4 ounces butter, and when cool, add enough flour to make a stiff paste, 3/4 cup yeast, and a pinch of salt. Let it rise, add 2 eggs well beaten, 2 1/2 cups sugar, 1 cup currants, and more flour, to make a firm dough. Let it rise for 5 hours. Make into buns, let them rise, rub with sugar and bake till brown.
A sponge-and-dough sweet bun of the old English kind, with no oven temperature, no timing and a yeast measurement that belongs to a different era of baking. The sequence matters more than the numbers.
- The yeastThree-quarters of a cup is liquid barm or a soft compressed-yeast slurry, not modern granules. About 2 teaspoons of instant yeast, or one 2 1/4 tsp packet, does the same work for this quantity of flour.
- Why two risingsWhy the staged mixing -- The first stage is a sponge: milk, butter, flour and yeast only, left until puffy. Sugar, eggs and fruit go in afterwards, and a heavily sugared dough is slower to rise, which may be why they are held back. Note that the recipe calls for three rises in all: sponge, bulk, and the shaped buns.
- The five hoursProbably reflects a cool kitchen and a heavily sugared dough rather than a fixed rule. In a warm room the rise may well be done sooner; judge it by roughly doubled volume.
- Flour quantityNone is given. Expect somewhere near 6 to 7 cups total across both stages for a pint of milk; add it until the dough is firm but still slightly tacky, and stop there.
- SugarTwo and a half cups is very sweet by modern taste and produces a slack, slow dough. Reducing it gives a less sweet bun and should rise faster.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh red or black currants. Soak briefly in warm water and pat dry if they have gone hard in the jar.
- OvenUnstated. Enriched sugary buns of this size want a moderately hot oven, 375-400F, for 15 to 20 minutes; any hotter and the sugar crust darkens before the crumb sets.
- "Rub with sugar"Brush the risen buns with milk or a little beaten egg first, then scatter or press coarse sugar over the tops so it sticks and crusts in the oven.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 buns from a pint of milk, depending on how large you shape them. Best eaten fresh.
Sheep-shearing was one of the fixed feast points of the English farming year, and like harvest home it came with food that the household would not otherwise trouble to make: white flour, butter, dried fruit and a great deal of sugar, handed out to the shearers and the neighbours who came to help. Buns of this type belong to the same broad family as the Bath bun and the wigg, enriched yeast doughs raised with barm from the brewing and sweetened far past everyday bread. The parenthetical "(England.)" is doing the work that a headnote would do now. The vagueness about flour and oven is normal for the period, when a cook judged a dough by feel.