Hot Cross Buns

                        Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns – natashaskitchen.comIngredients for Hot Cross Buns:

1/2 cup raisins, currants, or craisins + 1 cup boiling hot water
3/4 cup very warm milk, divided into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup (I used whole milk, 2% is fine)
1/2 cup white sugar + 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup (4 Tbsp) unsalted butter, softened 15 seconds in microwave
1/2 tsp salt
1 envelope active dry yeast (about 3/4 Tbsp or 2 1/4 tsp) – I used Red Star Yeast
2 large eggs, well beaten
3 1/2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour *measured correctly
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp (a large pinch) ground nutmeg

Instructions

1.    In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup raisins/craisins with 1 cup boiling hot water. Let sit 10 min then drain well and set aside.

2.    In a large measuring cup, combine 1/4 cup warm milk with 1/2 tsp sugar and sprinkle 3/4 Tbsp yeast over the top. Stir and let sit at room temp until bubbly and doubled in volume (10 min).

3.    In a large mixing bowl (I use my KitchenAid mixer), combine 1/2 cup very warm milk with 1/2 cup sugar, 4 Tbsp softened butter and 1/2 tsp salt. Stir until butter is melted. Add 2 well beaten eggs and proofed yeast mixture. Stir in 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon and pinch of ground nutmeg.

4.     Using the dough hook attachment mix in 3 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup at a time until soft dough forms. Knead 8-12 min on speed 2 or until smooth and elastic. Dough will still stick a little to the bowl but not to your fingers.

5.    Add drained raisins/craisins (pat them dry with paper towels if they still seem too wet) and transfer dough to a large buttered bowl, turning it to bring the buttered side-up. Cover with a tea towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free room 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in volume (you can also proof in a warm 100˚F oven).

6.    Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and cut in half then continue cutting dough until you have 12 equal sized pieces. Roll dough into balls and transfer to a buttered 9x13" baking pan. Cover with a tea towel and let them sit in a warm, draft-free room 30 min until puffed.

7.    Now you should preheat your oven to 375˚F. Generously brush the tops with egg wash and bake for 15-17 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool in the pan.

8.    Once buns are just warm (not hot), stir together the 1/2 cup powdered sugar and about 2 1/2 tsp milk. You can add more powdered sugar to thicken it up if needed. Transfer glaze to a ziploc bag, cut off the tip of the bag and pipe a cross shape over each of the buns. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Christmas Tree Buns

... roll the buns and place on the tray ...
... make sure to leave lots of room for the dough to rise ...

Moiya has gone to Calgary to hug and cuddle the new little Elizabeth Wood at Matthew and Stacey's house.

I don't know if she will be called Elizabeth or any of the lovely nicknames that go along with Elizabeth:Lizzie, Beth, Betty, Eliza -- the list is endless.

Before Moiya left Salmon Arm, she was in the middle of making something with a Christmas tree theme for a weekend party.

She settled on a Christmas tree made out of cheese buns.

Now this is a lot of work, but it really made me laugh.

There is not much cheaper to play with than bread dough.

I asked Moiya for the recipe.

When the buns are finished proofing,
they will look like this.

She said that it is just Marina's cheese bun recipe.

Well, thankfully she sent me pictures of steps, one, two and three.

It does look like Moiya is using parchment paper.

I don't know when parchment paper because a staple in my pantry.

Perhaps 10 years ago?

Having the tree on parchment paper looks like the secret.

... I can almost smell that fresh warm air above the buns...

As well, Moiya put little stars on the top bun, by rolling tiny piece of dough and then artfully making them into a star.

She did a couple of extra buns in case the first one didn't work out.

Now why she did any of this I will never know since the first person in the buffet line will ruin that art of the creation and it will just be a pan of buns after 10 people have taken one.

Still, it is something I would have tried.

Something I may still try.

Arta

Orange Rolls

Orange Rolls

Recipe Book from the Edmonton Relief Society

I asked everyone in the family for ideas about what I could do that they really want.

I am getting suggestions for cinnamon buns but those didn't really work out last night.

No one remembered to take the pan out of the oven until it was two hours too late.

Will I get them done?  Maybe.  All I am missing right now is one large orange to flavour the sugar that will be in the middle.  Oh yum to these.  An excellent choice from Eric, if I am making what it is that he remembers.

ORANGE ROLLS

1 cup milk (scalded)
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp. salt
5 tbsp. Crisco
2 eggs (beaten)
1 yeast cake
3-4 cups flour

While the milk is hot, add 4 tbsp sugar, salt and Crisco and leet cool.  When luke-warm, add 2 beaten eggs and yeast cake dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water.  Add flour and leet rise 1 1/2 hours.  Roll out as for cinnamon rolls and spread with a paste made of 1 cup sugar, 6 tbsp. butter and grated rind of one orange.  Cut in slices and put in muffin tins and let rise 1 1/2 hours.  Bake at 375, 15 to 20 minutes.

*Reprint from the 1953 Cook Book

FAYE PITCHER

Marina's Bun

Buns – Marina’s Recipe

7 c.            flour

½ c.                   sugar

2 Tblsp.   yeast

2 tsp.        salt

2                eggs (whisked)

2 ½ c.       water

½ c.          oil

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix on high for 5 min.  Let rise ½ hour. Knead and let rise again.

Buns - Marina's

Buns – Marina’s Recipe

7 c.            flour

½ c.                   sugar

2 Tblsp.   yeast

2 tsp.        salt

2                eggs (whisked)

2 ½ c.       water

½ c.          oil

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix on high for 5 min.  Let rise ½ hour. Knead and let rise again.

Butterhorns

Title: ButterHorns                   submitted by Moiya Wood

Description:

This is a very old recipe that didn't really have any instructions.   Arta gave it to me a long time ago and I watched her make them.   She doesn't have the instructions either.   I have just guessed at the temperature and just watch them carefully as you don't want them to be overdone.   Then they get tough.

Ingredients:

2  c.         scalded milk   (just warm)

1  c.         butter (margarine)

1 tsp.       salt

1/2 c.       sugar

1              egg

2 Tblsp.    yeast

5 1/2 c.     flour

Directions:

Dissolve yeast in milk before adding the salt and the rest of the ingredients.   

Mix     Let rise

Roll dough out into two rectangles

Spread with more butter.

Roll long end up like a jelly roll. 

Cut like traditional cinnamon buns.

Press all butterhorns down with the palm of your hand so they all rise equally.

Let rise.

Bake @ 350 degrees until a light browning occurs.

Ice and dip into cocoanut or nuts.

Share and enjoy!

Texas Roadhouse Rolls

Orange Whole Wheat Bread

1 orange

1 cup water

hot water

1 c. powdered milk

2 eggs

2 TB salt

2 TB dry yeast

11-12 c. whole wheat flour

1 cup honey

page 12 ... Orange Bread

Step 1: Cut 1 orange in half and remove seeds.  Put in blender with 1 cup water and 1 c honey and blend thoroughly.  (Do not peel the orange.)  Finish filling the blender with the ot water to the 1 liter mark.  Pour into your mixing bowl.

Step 2: Combine powdered milk with 1 cup whole wheat flour before adding to moist ingredients.  Add eggs, powdered milk, salt dry yeast and 7 c. whole wheat flour and blend thoroughly.  Add 4 to 5 more c. whole what flour and knead 10 minutes. 

Step 3: Form into 4 well greased loaf pans.  Let rise until doubled in bulk.

Step 4: Bake at 350° for 45 minutes.  This recipe makes wonderful light rolls.  You may desire to make some of the dough into rolls and the rest into loaves.

Orange Bread Glaze

1 c. powdered sugar

Juice from 1 orange

Make a glaze of powdered sugar and the juice from one orange.  While the bread or rolls are piping hot, pour the glaze over them.  This is an outstanding bread.

TIP: Grease the pans with a hard shortening for best results.

Notes from Arta:
This is another good recipe.  Though we haven't talked about ordinary brown bread yet, this is just a variation on it.  I have a muffin recipe that I use for Orange Muffins from the Jean Pare's books that uses this same method: grind an orange so finely that the zest permeates the whole muffin. 

When I make this recipe, I don't add the powdered milk or the eggs unless I want to make it into buns.  Ad yes, the glaze is delicious, but I don't need those calories anymore, so I don't do that when I am just making the bread for my family.  But I wouldn't look down on anyone who puts it on their bread.  For sure, it would show that the cook cares.

Arta

Brown and Serve Rolls, Part II

 ... bake 27 - 33 minutes... 350 F.

There are many ways to get a golden colour on the buns. My favorite is to use part milk and part water in the recipe, and the milk solids will make the buns this golden colour. If I choose to use only water in the recipe, I have a lighter coloured tray of buns. You can also use a wash of egg yolks to get the brighter colour.

... keep the loaves covered with plastic while they rise ...

I am ahead when it comes to collecting grocery bags, so I split mine with scissors so that they will cover the loaves or the bread while it is rising, sometimes using more than one. If you look way back in the picture, you can see I have also used this method for another set of bread that is rising. When Laynie and I had our bread-making day, we were just concentrating on getting a feel for the dough, so we made 3 different batches of bread. By the time she was finished she felt comfortable with the dough and was saying, "Hey, this isn't difficult at all. Easy, actually."

... bread pans from the past ...

The bread pans here are old, cast-offs from a professional bakery, though you can buy them new like this. There is no other way to get a high loaf with straight side, than to have a pan that will give you that shape, and these pans do that. When I first got these pans, I had one set cut into 3 individual pans because I had an oven that would take four loaves at a time. I like having them together -- they are easy to put in and pull out of the oven this way.

Arta

Brown and Serve Rolls

 ... extra rolls placed in small bread tins ... let double  in size ...

Billie Bates

(makes 10 dozen small)

18 c. flour (approx., add last)

2 c. milk – scalded

3 c. cold water. Add to scalded milk

4 tsp sugar

4 pkgs. yeast. (each is 1 TB of yeast)

8 eggs well eaten

8 tbsp. butter or oil (1/2 c.)

2 tbsp. salt

12 tbsp. sugar (3/4 c.)

1. Add the sugar and yeast to the milk/water which is luke warm. Let stand 10 min.

2. Beat the last four ingredients together. I use my blender. Then add to the yeast mixture.

... dough has risen ... it was originally half this size ...

... butter pan well ...

Greg Bates’s mother showed me how to make this recipe many years ago. 

She came to my kitchen. 

She coached me as to how soft to make the dough and how long to let it raise before rolling it into buns. 

 As well, she showed me the bun rolling method she had learned when she worked in a bakery. 

“If you practise long enough you will be able to roll with both hands,” she said to me. 

When I got good with one hand, I did try the two handed method, which I will be happy to demo for anyone. 

You just have to get both hands going at the same time, in opposite directions, both rolling in to the centre of your body at the same time.

Billie copied the recipe from the back of a bag of bread and quadrupled it.

I usually get two full pans – the large cookie sheet size or about 70 plus buns. I never make them small enough to get 120 as the recipe suggests.

... cut dough in even chunks and begin to roll ...

On this recipe there is a note as to how Billie turns these into Hot Cross Buns.

Use brown sugar.

Add 3 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp each of cloves, nutmeg and allspice.

I have a more complicated recipe for Hot Cross Buns so I didn’t ever try her tip on this one.

Laynie and I tried this recipe the day we got together and made three batches of bread.

Why not, we said.

Amir  does a good job and I am done twice as fast.

We are just practising, and if we don’t want to complete any of the recipes, we can just take the dough down and feed it to the fish.

We didn’t have to do that.

I made this recipe again this week – for Michael’s 2nd birthday party for Richard and Miranda were serving pulled pork.

That is when I got the idea that if I took a few pictures it would give you a better idea of how high to let the dough rise and how far apart to put the buns on the large trays.

 ... 3 x 5 card now photocopied with notes added ...

For a long time I I had Billie's recipe on a 3 x 5 card .

Then I photocopied it so that I could have it in a binder that I keep all of my bread recipes in: waffles, pancakes, tortillas, roti, buns, specialty breads, etc.

I try to attached notes now to all of the recipes.

The reason that I have a special binder for Breads, Soups, etc., is that Norma Leavitt and her sisters published a cookbook.

Norma told me that it was so much work and that if you have good recipes, it is a better idea to just put them in a binder and have that book for yourself.

My Bread Binder

 So I began to do that.  Now I have separate binders, one out at the cabin and one here at home.

That is a bit much, for the recipe I want is usually in the binder that is at the other house.

I was wondering about the recipe -- the part that asks a person to scald the milk.  I did a google search  on scalding milk and at http://www.cooksinfo.com/scald I found the following information:

"Howard Hillman, travel and food journalist, writes: "Scalding has two primary purposes: to kill pathogenic microorganisms and to destroy certain enzymes that would keep emulsifying agents in the milk from doing their thickening job. Since those two goals are accomplished when milk is pasteurized at the dairy, scalding need only be done when you use raw (unpasteurized) milk. Many cookbook writers do not know this fact and therefore direct their readers to scald the milk even though it is usually unnecessary today."

I am satisfied that scalding the milk is a step I am not going to take.

Arta

Cinnamon Buns : Great Aunt Erva's Way

I got together with some friends to show them how to make cinnamon buns. Now while I called this "Cooking with Mary" to them, it could have been "Cooking with Wyora", or Cooking with Aunt Erva", or cooking with any one of my maternal aunts.

But if you haven't had the chance to do any of that ... then here is the basic method.

Start with Master Bread Dough.  Any bread dough recipe will do.  My mother uses water for the liquid and oil for the butter.

Ingredients

6 to 6-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 T sugar
2 envelopes active dry yeast
2 t salt
1 ½ cups water
½ cup milk
2 T butter

How to make the dough:

Combine water, milk and butter; heat until warm (100℉ to 110℉). Add sugar and yeast; let stand 5 minutes. Add 2 ½ cups flour and salt; beat 2 minutes at medium speed of a bread mixer, scraping bowl occasionally.

Beat in enough remaining flour to make soft dough. Knead for 5 minutes in your bread mixer.

Place kneaded dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover, let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 to 1 ½ hours.  You can punch the dough down once if you like.

Here is the cinnamon bun wrapping method from my childhood:

Cut off a chunk of dough.

Stretch it so it is long.

Dip in melted margarine or butter.  Butter tastes better.  Margarine is cheaper and if you are going t make pan, after pan, you might usually use the margarine.  But for a more divine taste?  Butter.

Drop in bowl of yellow sugar and cinnamon.  You choose how much sugar to cinnamon.  We like lots.

Coat dough.

Tie it in a knot.

Drop it an 8 x 14 pan.

The buns should lightly touch but not be too squished together.

Let rise until double.

Bake at 375 for about  27  minutes.

Dump out of pan immediately and upside down.

Enjoy hot on the end of a fork.

Variation: sprinkle maraschino cherries in the pan before you put the buns on top. When you dump out the pan, it looks beautiful and tastes great too.

Mary