Views From Mount Dunbar: No more toughy-duffies

Success at last! I've now tweaked mom's old hot-cross bun recipe enough times to produce the kind of panful I remember her taking out of the oven. Photo by John Denniston.

Back in May, I wrote an item about burrowing into an old cookbook of mom’s and trying to replicate her hot-cross buns, one of my long-time favourites from her kitchen. Her hand-written recipe was more like reminder notes to herself than instructions for a novice bread-maker like me, and without her standing at my shoulder to fill in the gaps, the results were predictable.

Instead of the overflowing pan of lofty, fragrant buns she used to take out of the oven, mine were small, low, separate, and … tough. As I wrote at the time, they were the kind of thing she would have called toughy-duffies.

Well, my pride was stung and the pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, so I collected further bread-making advice and tried again. Several times. Along the way, this is what I learned: The buns actually need a second rise to give them height and texture, even if mom’s recipe didn’t say so. Place them close, and they’ll rise – and cook – moistly together, producing the shoulder-to-shoulder overflowing panfuls I recall. A certain proportion of white flour is best even in a whole-wheat recipe. Knead for seven minutes, instead of guessing when the dough “feels right.” Skimp a bit on the flour – a runnier dough means a moister bun. Brown sugar instead of white; whole milk instead of skim. Old-fashioned lard to grease the pan instead of olive oil.

Well, voila! The buns I took from the oven today were lofty, moist, fragrant and tender. The pandemic has taught us many things, mostly negative, but now I have learned how to replicate a delicious part of the past. I think even mom would be impressed.