Reviving mom's buns

Here I am, trying to channel my mother after I found her old recipe for hot-cross buns. I'm showing John how she used to squeeze the dough through her thumb and forefinger to create a perfect sphere. Photo by John Denniston. 

Mom wrote out her favourite recipes by hand in an old blue ledger. As you can see from the well-spotted page, this recipe must have been used often. For our family, hot-cross buns were a year-round phenomenon, not reserved for Easter.  Photo by John Denniston.

John’s recent venture into Covid bread-making got me thinking about home-baking and the long-forgotten taste treasures of the past. Oh! the memory of mom’s hot-cross buns, fragrant with cinnamon, browned and puffed, studded with just enough raisins to make each one a treat.

Could they be revived? Six years since she died and at least 10 years since she last made it, could mom’s best bun recipe live again?  Diving into the drawer where I keep such mementoes, I found the hard-cover blue ledger where she wrote her best recipes in a fine and ladylike script unknown to the block-letters-and-computer-keyboard children of today. Five pages in, at the top of a reassuringly well-spotted page, is “Hot-cross buns.”

What’s curious about such recipes, from those whose lives have centred on the kitchen, is what they don’t include. A list of ingredients, yes, and amounts to some degree, but “a few cups” of flour? Whole wheat or white or a mixture? I recall these as whole wheat buns, but the recipe gives no clue. No instructions on kneading times or cooking temperatures and should there be a second rise or is one enough? –– the assumption is that the baker will just know. Such recipes are guides for the knowledgeable.

The best part about the results was the smell – the fragrance of baking bread and cinnamon that I remember so well. The actual buns, well, let’s just say they are a start if I want to figure out my own way of making them. They probably needed more kneading, more rising time, and should have been baked closer together. They had a crusty exterior instead of the soft one I remember, and once cooled, settled into a certain solidity. Mom had a term for such results, and I fear she would have called them “toughy-duffies.”

 John, lacking the idyllic memories of the original, thought they were just fine.

Yes! Yeast has returned to store shelves, and here is my stash.

Since I remember mom's hot-cross buns as being made of whole wheat, I waited until whole wheat flour returned to store shelves before I tried her recipe. The only problem is that it was only available in 10-kg bags. That's a lot of baking ahead!

The makings of the recipe: milk, butter and eggs to the left,  foamy yeast in the measuring cup in centre, bowl awaiting the finished dough to the upper right, and flour and raisins on the lower right.

"A few cups of flour" with the liquid ingredients added. Much more flour was needed to turn this into bread dough.

Dough in greased bowl, ready to rise.

Risen dough: is it double the original as instructed?

This old work-horse of a baking pan is what mom used to bake her buns on. Since I inherited it, I've used it for almost everything, especially baking salmon. It's showing its age, but I hope it lasts me out.

Cutting up the risen dough to make into buns. Photo by John Denniston.

Shaping the buns. Photo by John Denniston.

 I wish mom had been around to give me spacing instructions. Photo by John Denniston.

Ready for the oven.

All cooked. Hmm. They don't look like mom's evenly-sized, closely packed buns that covered the entire pan. I guess this is how you learn!

Close-up of mom's recipe in case anyone else wants to take a shot at it!

Mom's blue ledger with her favourite recipes hand-written inside.