Baking
As those of you who follow me on tumblr will know, I've been trying my hand at hot cross buns recently.
For the unitiated, hot cross buns are a traditional British easter treat that are fragrant and yummy and especially good toasted with butter. Being pregnant, the moment a picture of them crossed my dashboard, I WANTED THEM. Sadly, Muricans do not do them the same (if at all). British HCB's look like this:
At my local Star Market, they look like this:
Sad. Fucking. Face.
BUT! I've been baking my own bread for years, and not just in a bread maker, so I figured, how hard can it be? (Hint: very hard).
So here's the recipe I used. First problem is you can't get mixed spice here, but I just looked up the proportions online and made my own. Second problem if you can't get golden syrup here either, so I thought about making my own (apparently not that hard, but messy) but in the end decided to sub it out for an apricot jam glaze.
Now, this is an enriched dough, meaning it has an egg in it, which you do not normally do for standard bread. It makes it heavier and harder to knead, and I do not have a much experience in working with it. Round 1, I made a couple of small measurement errors, but I also think the recipe doesn't include enough fluid, and the dough ended up far too dry. It didn't rise AT ALL, despite getting several hours of extra time, and while my buns came out tasty, they were very dense.
(I didn't bother to glaze or cross them, given how fugly they there).
Round 2, I added 150ml more milk and doubled the amount of yeast, as well as kneading for a few minutes longer. The dough actually rose this time, but only a little (it should've double in size, and it wasn't anywhere near) and it still needed double the amount of time given in the recipe to manage even that. I also put the oven on 200 instead of 240, to see if they'd rise any more in there, which turned out to be a good move. Just as tasty, but decidedly better looking.
(I even got a couple of crosses in there! The mix was too watery, though).
Poking around online while they were in the oven, I found out that it's usual for enriched dough to take longer to rise, especially without a warming a drawer, and so for round 3, rather than adjust the recipe further, I think I just need to give them more time (and hope for the warmer weather to come back!) Also, my recipe's method calls for three risings, which... is possibly too many for an already reluctant dough, so I'll probably cut one of those out too. So fingers crossed for an actual batch bake next time!
But in the meantime, and the main reason I'm making this post -- does anyone have any tips or advice for working with enriched dough? Am I doing anything obviously wrong? Or is this just going to be trial and error?
For the unitiated, hot cross buns are a traditional British easter treat that are fragrant and yummy and especially good toasted with butter. Being pregnant, the moment a picture of them crossed my dashboard, I WANTED THEM. Sadly, Muricans do not do them the same (if at all). British HCB's look like this:
At my local Star Market, they look like this:
Sad. Fucking. Face.
BUT! I've been baking my own bread for years, and not just in a bread maker, so I figured, how hard can it be? (Hint: very hard).
So here's the recipe I used. First problem is you can't get mixed spice here, but I just looked up the proportions online and made my own. Second problem if you can't get golden syrup here either, so I thought about making my own (apparently not that hard, but messy) but in the end decided to sub it out for an apricot jam glaze.
Now, this is an enriched dough, meaning it has an egg in it, which you do not normally do for standard bread. It makes it heavier and harder to knead, and I do not have a much experience in working with it. Round 1, I made a couple of small measurement errors, but I also think the recipe doesn't include enough fluid, and the dough ended up far too dry. It didn't rise AT ALL, despite getting several hours of extra time, and while my buns came out tasty, they were very dense.
(I didn't bother to glaze or cross them, given how fugly they there).
Round 2, I added 150ml more milk and doubled the amount of yeast, as well as kneading for a few minutes longer. The dough actually rose this time, but only a little (it should've double in size, and it wasn't anywhere near) and it still needed double the amount of time given in the recipe to manage even that. I also put the oven on 200 instead of 240, to see if they'd rise any more in there, which turned out to be a good move. Just as tasty, but decidedly better looking.
(I even got a couple of crosses in there! The mix was too watery, though).
Poking around online while they were in the oven, I found out that it's usual for enriched dough to take longer to rise, especially without a warming a drawer, and so for round 3, rather than adjust the recipe further, I think I just need to give them more time (and hope for the warmer weather to come back!) Also, my recipe's method calls for three risings, which... is possibly too many for an already reluctant dough, so I'll probably cut one of those out too. So fingers crossed for an actual batch bake next time!
But in the meantime, and the main reason I'm making this post -- does anyone have any tips or advice for working with enriched dough? Am I doing anything obviously wrong? Or is this just going to be trial and error?