Tasty Pull-Apart Hot Cross Bun Recipe
Here’s the recipe for you which is adapted from a Nadine Ingram recipe from the Flour and Stone Cookbook. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.
By the way, I think these are best served on the day or toasted the following day.
Ingredients:
Fruit Mix
- 60g each sultanas, raisins and currants
- 200mls boiling water
- 1 Earl Grey tea bag
- 50g dried apricots, chopped
- 1 tsp finely grated orange rind
Bun Dough
- 400g bread flour
- 1 tsp fine salt
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp each ground nutmeg, ground allspice and cloves
- 10g dried yeast
- 60g softened unsalted butter
- 60g soft brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 200mls milk
Crossing Mixture
- 100g plain flour
- 100 ml water
- 2 tbs sunflower oil
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
Glaze
- 100g caster sugar
- 2 tbs water
- 1 tsp finely grated orange rind
- Strained juice of 1 orange
To serve
Method:
Fruit mix
- Place the sultanas, raisins and currants, tea bag and 200mls boiling water in a bowl.
- Set aside for an hour or until fruit is plump.
- Remove tea bag and drain the fruit well discarding the liquid then pat the fruit dry with a paper towel.
- Add the dried apricots and 1 tsp orange zest and set aside until needed.
Dough
- Sift the flour, salt and spices into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the dried yeast, butter, sugar and egg.
- Mix together on a low speed adding enough milk to form a sticky dough.
- Once incorporated, increase the speed to medium and mix for 7 minutes. The dough will have pulled away from the side of the bowl forming a ball.
- Add the fruit mixture and continue to mix until incorporated. The dough will be quite sticky at this point.
- Place the dough into a large lightly greased bowl.
- Cover and place in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and gently knead until no longer sticky.
- Divide into 20 equal pieces if making into a circle or 12 pieces if making larger buns. Use your hand to roll each piece on the work surface to form a round bun.
- Place buns close together on a baking stone or pizza tray lined with baking paper, cover with a tea towel and allow to prove until doubled in size, about 45 minutes. While the buns are proving, make the crossing mixture.
Crossing mixture
- Place all the ingredients for the crossing mix in a bowl and whisk to form an elastic batter. If it’s too thick, add a little extra water.
- Fill a piping bag fitted with a 5mm plain nozzle.
- Once the buns have risen, pipe a cross on the top of each bun then take the baking paper and gently remove the paper with buns from the baking stone as the stone needs to be preheated before use.
- If you’re using a pizza tray then ignore this step and place the tray in a pre-heated 200°C oven.
- Place the baking stone in a cold oven on the middle shelf, then turn the oven to 200°C (conventional).
- Allow to heat for 15 minutes before carefully placing the buns onto the pre-heated stone.
- Return the baking stone to the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the buns have risen a little. Rotate the baking stone and bake for a further 10 - 15 minutes or until dark golden brown.
Glaze
- While the buns are in the oven, make the glaze.
- Combine the sugar, water, 1 tsp of orange rind and the juice and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or until syrupy.
- Remove the buns from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
- Brush hot cross buns with the glaze and cool a little, then slide the baking paper and buns onto a wire rack.
- Serve warm with butter and jam.
Notes:
Even if you don’t own a baking stone, you can still make these pull apart hot cross buns without a baking stone. A pizza tray works just fine. If you don’t fancy making 20 small buns, the recipe will yield 12 large buns which you could make using a lamington tin.
