Yesterday was Good Friday and tradition dictates that those of us from a Christian heritage eat Hot Cross Buns! With the Movement Control Order still in operation in Malaysia, I decided to try making Hot Cross Buns myself. I have only tried once before and the results were not impressive. So my sister suggested we both use the same recipe so we could share our buns despite being thousands of miles apart. We used Mary Berry’s hot cross buns recipe, which you can find using this link.
My buns turned out far better than I expected, and much better than my sister’s and another friend from the UK, despite all using the same recipe. So, it got me thinking to why this was and I decided it was all in the ‘bread making’ component of these buns. I used to make bread using an electric food mixer to prepare the dough. Then I attended a bread making class in Singapore, run by Dean Brettschneider, and my bread improved by leaps and bounds! I used his methods for the Hot Cross Buns and I think this made the difference between solid (rock) buns of my friends and the light fluffy buns I prepared as shown in the photo above.
I have attached a video of his kneeding technique, and I will add a few comments here:
(1) The dough should start off quite wet and sticky. Do not be tempted to add extra flour. Start by hand mixing as you would normally do, just to get things started.
(2) Use Dean’s kneeding technique (see video) and kneed the dough for 3 minutes. Then let it rest for 1 minute (cover the dough with upturned bowl to prevent drying).
(3) Repeat the kneeding process (2-3 min) then resting step (1 min) for a total of 4 times.
(4) After each resting period, you will see that the dough has become firmer, less sticky, and easier to handle.
(5) Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and leave for at least 1 hour to double in size. (For the buns, I left the dough for almost 2 hours as it was slow to get going.)
(6) Gently knock back the dough in the bowl by folding it onto itself. Cover and leave for another 45 mins.
(7) At this stage, we had a power cut so I put the dough into the slightly cooler fridge. Power was restored over an hour later, so then I resumed the baking process. At this stage, the dough was more than double its starting volume.
(8) I divided the dough into 12 balls and continued with Mary Berry’s instructions.
(9) Main tips: use the hand kneeding technique shown here with the kneeding/resting cycles; use a total of 3 rising steps (not the 2 used in Mary Berry’s recipe); and always make sure the dough has doubled in size as your decision point rather than sticking to a time table.
I attended the one-day Basic Bread Making Class in Singapore in March 2019 and I would thoroughly recommend it if you would like to improve your bread making skills. Here are some photos from that day...
Check out the Brettschneider’s Baking & Cooking School here.
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