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We’ve prob­a­bly all sang that lit­tle ditty at some time in our lives.  I know we did when we were kids grow­ing up in Aus­tralia.  Bread often plays a major role in hol­i­day and reli­gious obser­vances. The hot cross bun is tra­di­tional Lenton bread, its exact ori­gins unknown. Some say that it has pagan ori­gins, the cross rep­re­sent­ing the moon and its four quar­ters. Anglo-Saxons ate the sacra­men­tal buns in honor of their god­dess Eas­t­ore. When the Romans arrived in Britain, the clergy tried to stop the use of the sacra­men­tal buns, but could not. So they blessed them and gave the cross on the buns a Chris­t­ian mean­ing. Tra­di­tion­ally these buns are dec­o­rated with dough piped across the top before bak­ing, not a sweet icing as is com­monly seen. A thin glaze brushed over the buns pro­vides the added sweetness.

Yield: 30 Rolls

Ingre­di­ents:

Dough
10 ounces Golden raisins
10 ounces Dark raisins
3 ounces Can­died orange peel
2 lb. 4 oz. Bread flour
4 ounces Short­en­ing
3 1/2 ounces Gran­u­lated sugar
10 grams Dough con­di­tioner, optional
2 ounces Dry milk pow­der
2 3/4 ounces Com­pressed yeast
1 Table­spoon Salt
2 Eggs
1 tea­spoon Vanilla extract
1 tea­spoon Car­damom, ground
1 tea­spoon All­spice, ground
2 tea­spoons Gin­ger, ground
1 Table­spoon Cin­na­mon, ground
19 fluid ounces Water

Cross Dough
4 ounces Pas­try flour
3/4 ounce Short­en­ing
3 1/2 fluid ounces Milk

6 fluid ounces Bun Glaze

Method:

1.    Place the raisins and can­died orange peel in a small bowl and cover with hot water. Let soften in the water for 5 min­utes. Drain the water and let the fruit con­di­tion for 2 to 4 hours before using. Set aside.

2.    Place the flour, short­en­ing, sugar, dough con­di­tioner, if using, dry milk pow­der, yeast, salt, eggs, vanilla extract and spices in the bowl of a mixer fit­ted with the dough hook. Add the water and mix the dough on low speed for 3 min­utes until moist­ened. Stop the machine and scrape the bowl. Add addi­tional flour if nec­es­sary to cre­ate a soft dough. Mix the dough on medium speed for 6 to 7 min­utes until it is soft and pliable.

3.    Add the con­di­tioned fruit and mix the dough on low speed until the fruit is well dis­trib­uted in the dough. If nec­es­sary, dust the dough lightly with more flour to help the fruit incorporate.

4.    Scrape the dough onto a flour-dusted work­bench. Cover and fer­ment for 30 min­utes. Deflate the dough and fold it into thirds then let it rest for another 15 minutes.

5.    Divide the dough into 3–1/2-ounce (100-gram) pieces. Round the dough into tight rolls with a smooth top sur­face. Place the formed rolls, seam side down on a paper-lined half sheet pan. Posi­tion them in rows on the tray, 5 rolls by 6 rolls so that the rolls touch when fully proofed.

6.    Proof the rolls with low humid­ity until dou­bled in size, approx­i­mately 50 minutes.

7.    While the rolls proof, pre­pare the cross dough. Com­bine the pas­try flour, short­en­ing and milk in the bowl of a mixer fit­ted with a pad­dle attach­ment. Mix on medium speed until the short­en­ing is well blended and the dough is lump free.

8.    When the rolls have proofed, scoop the cross mix­ture into a pas­try bag fit­ted with a plain tip. Quickly pipe a cross over the sur­face of each roll.

9.    Bake at 375°F (190°C) until the rolls are a rich brown color, approx­i­mately 15 minutes.

10.    Brush the hot rolls gen­er­ously with the chilled Bun Glaze, mak­ing cer­tain they are well coated so that no dry spots appear when the glaze dries.

Source: On Bak­ing — Laben­sky et. al.

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There is noth­ing quite like the smell of bread bak­ing.  Unless of course it’s cake or cook­ies bak­ing.  But bread fills the house with that mor­eish, yeasty fra­grance you just can’t get enough of.  Recently I pur­chased a fab­u­lous book titled “Arti­san Bread in Five Min­utes a Day.”  You start with a basic dough from the mas­ter recipe that can be kept in the fridge until you want to bake some­thing.   At which point you take some of the dough and add your flavours, shape, bake and eat!  This week I have really been hun­gry for Tan­doori Chicken so decided to make that and what bet­ter to accom­pany this meal than some tasty gar­lic naan bread.

Mas­ter Recipe

3 cups of luke­warm water
1 1/2 table­spoons gran­u­lated yeast (1 1/2 pack­ets)
1 1/2 table­spoons kosher or other coarse salt
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all pur­pose white  flour, mea­sured with the scook and sweep method.

Mix­ing and Stor­ing Dough

1.   Warm the water slightly:  It should feel just a lit­tle warmer than body tem­per­a­ture, about 100 degrees F.  Warm water will rise the dough to the right point for stor­age in about 2 hours.  You can use cold tap water and get an iden­ti­cal final result;  then the first ris­ing will take 3 or even 4 hours.  That won’t be too great a dif­fer­ence, as you will only be doing this once per stored batch.

2.  Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5 quart bowl or prefer­able, in a reseal­able, lid­ded (not air­tight)  plas­tic food con­tainer or food grade bucket.  Don’t worry about get­ting it all to dissolve.

3.  Mix in the flour — knead­ing is unnec­es­sary.  Add all of the flour at once, mea­sur­ing it in with dry ingre­di­ent mea­sur­ing cups, by gen­tly scoop­ing up the flour and lev­el­ing it off with a knife.  Mix this in with a wooden spoon, or high capac­ity food proces­sor (14 cups or larger) or mixer fit­ted with a dough hook attach­ment.   If it get’s too dry you can reach into the dough with very wet hands and press the mix together but don’t knead.  You are fin­ished when every­thing is uni­formly moist.  This will yeild a dough that is wet  and loose which will prob­a­bly con­form to the shape of the container.

4.  Allow to rise.  cover with a lid but not air­tight.  Do not use screw top jars as the gasses will not be able to escape and the jars could explode.  Allow the mix to rise at room tem­per­a­ture for approx­i­mately 2 hours.  The top may begin to col­lapse in on itself, this is ok.  Longer ris­ing times up to 5 hours will not harm the result.  You can begin using any por­tion of the dough after this time to make your breads.

When you wish to bake some bread, DO NOT KNEAD.  Just shape your loaf in 30 to 60 sec­onds and you are ready to bake.  It is best baked on a pizza stone with some corn­meal sprin­kled on it to pre­vent your loaf from sticking.

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Why is it that when you take your eyes off the fruit bowl for one day the bananas end up black and over­ripe?  I hate to see fruit go bad and luck­ily when it’s bananas you can still use them for yummy banana bread or in this case banana cupcakes!

Be sure to visit Kitchen Rap & Gourmet Girl’s 2009 Sum­mer Cup­cake Crawl to vote on the lus­cious cup­cake entries.. of course a vote for me would be great too!

Banana Cup­cakes

Ingredients 4oz (125g) but­ter 6oz (175g) sugar 2 eggs 2 large mashed ripe bananas (or 3 med sized) 1 tsp Bak­ing soda 2 Tbsp boil­ing milk 1 tsp bak­ing power 8oz (225g) flour

Method Cream but­ter & sugar for around 2 min­utes prefer­ably in your stand mixer with a pad­dle attach­ment.  Or you can do it by hand if you’re up to it! Add eggs one at a time. Add mashed bananas. Add bak­ing soda that has been dis­solved in hot milk. Lastly mix in sifted flour & bak­ing powder. Spoon into cup­cake papers and bake at 350 deg F for around 20 mins.  They should begin to get golden on top but don’t over bake. Glaze Ingre­di­ents 1/4 cup butter 2 cups pow­dered sugar 2 tbsp milk, (or you can use heavy cream for thicker glaze) extract/flavoring — I used Banana and it was great! Melt 1/4 cup (4 table­spoons) of but­ter in a saucepan or microwave. Sift 2 cups of pow­dered sugar into a medium size bowl. Add the melted but­ter to the pow­dered sugar. Add 2 table­spoons of milk. If desired, add 1/4 tea­spoon of almond extract or 1/2 tea­spoon of vanilla for flavor. Beat until smooth and creamy, adding a lit­tle more milk if necessary. Driz­zle over a cooled cake. Tips: For a richer and creamier glaze, use heavy cream in place of the milk. Sub­sti­tute cit­rus juice for the milk and add a lit­tle grated zest for a cit­rus glaze.