The traditional Hot Cross bun goes way back in history to the start of the AD period.  Sheila gives you the House of Bread traditional recipe and some suggestions for creating your own tradition. Hot Cross buns have more butter and more eggs, than traditional dinner rolls that produces a slightly denser roll (but not heavy!). These are more of a dessert/breakfast roll but they are not that sweet as an option to serve with dinner. 

Recipe Yields 2 1/2 pounds of dough or roughly 12-16 hot cross buns, depending upon the size you want your bun)

½ cup of water

½ cup of milk

Heat the water and the milk together in the microwave until it is very warm but not burning hot. It should feel like warm bath water.

2 packages or one and 3/4 tablespoons of active dry yeast

1/2 cup of white sugar

1 lemon zested and juiced. Zest the entire outside of the lemon and the squeeze the juice into the bowl.

2 T of melted butter

1 egg

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

Pinch of nutmeg and all spice (about ¼ teaspoon, and if you don’t have one or the other just use one kind).

Optional: ½ tsp of cardamom or 1/2 tsp of ginger.

1 T of salt

Stir all the ingredients together before adding the flour in order to evenly distribute the flavors.

4 cups of unbleached flour (bread flour, high protein)

Add at the end of the kneading when you have the good dough stage:

1 cup of raisins.

Note: On the raisins, if you want to substitute currants, or golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries do so to your taste but no more than one cup total.

FROSTING:

1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, tsp vanilla or almond extract then add milk until you get a thick pancake batter type consistency. 

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.  

Happy Baking, and Happy Easter everyone!  Thanks for listening. 

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