Hot cross buns – Mr CC guest blogs…..

A rare guest post on my site in which Mr CC puts me to shame and shows his mastery of yeasted buns...OK, now I've typed that it just sounds weird, so I'll say no more and hand over to Mr CC:

Inspired by the “Great British Bake Off” Easter masterclass show on BBC2, I decided that I would make Hot Cross Buns this Easter, as they have always been a favourite of mine.  I used Paul Hollywood’s recipe on the programme’s website and followed the recipe’s instructions.  As both Mrs CC and I aren’t big fans of mixed peel I left it out of the recipe, but everything else is the same.

All the ingredients were mixed, kneaded and left to prove in warm room for an hour, but I was disappointed to find that there was very little rise in the dough and it was nowhere near the doubling in size that the recipe suggested would happen. Leaving it for another half hour made little difference, but I decided to carry on regardless. I divided the dough into 12 roughly equal parts and placed on a baking tray to prove for another hour.

Again, there was very little increase in size after an hour and my patience was beginning to wear quite thin at this point. Assuming that something terribly wrong had occurred in my preparation and in a fit of pique, I tore the recipe into satisfyingly small pieces and binned them…then I had my lunch and forgot about the buns.

I looked in on them about an hour later and, by some miracle, they had risen and were getting quite friendly with each other on the baking tray.

I piped the crosses (not the neatest of jobs, I like to think of them as being impressionistic) and put them in the oven. They seemed to darken quite quickly and had to be removed after 19 minutes to stop them from burning. Whilst still warm, melted apricot jam was bushed on them to give a shiny glaze.

Despite my efforts and the problems encountered, the buns came out fine and went down very well with a cup of tea.

So what went wrong with the dough? Answers found whilst searching around on the Internet seemed to suggest that the milk was too hot when I added it to the mix. This might have had the effect of killing some of the yeast, which would have reduced the rise in the dough. That might be why it took so long to rise.