1 lb. of flour, 8 ozs. of butter, 8 ozs. of sugar, 4 eggs, a little warm milk, 1 oz. of Parisian yeast, some citron peel cut small, and half a nutmeg grated. This will make fourteen twopenny buns.
Rub the butter in with the flour, make a bay and break in the eggs, add the yeast with sufficient milk to make the whole into a dough of moderate consistency, and put in a warm place to prove. When it has risen enough mix in the peel, a little essence of lemon, and the sugar, which should be in small pieces about the size of peas. Divide into pieces for buns, prove and bake in gentle heat. They may be washed with egg and dusted with sugar before proving.
19. Another Way.—4 lbs. of flour, 1 lb. of butter, 6 ozs. of sugar, 4 ozs. of yeast, 4 eggs, and sufficient milk to make all into a dough; add essence of lemon.
Warm the milk, add the sugar and yeast with sufficient flour to make a ferment; when ready, add butter, eggs, and remainder of flour, with currants or peel to taste. Weigh or divide into 3 ozs. each, mould them up round egg on top rolled in castor sugar; slightly prove, bake in moderate oven.
20.—Hot Cross Buns.
Take 1 quart of milk or water, 3 ozs. of yeast, 12 ozs. of moist sugar, 12 ozs. of butter, 1 oz. of salt, with sufficient flour to make a nice mellow dough.
Proceed the same as for tea-cakes (p. [24]), adding spice, currants, and peel to taste; weigh 4 ozs. for a penny, make a cross in the middle of the bun, wash over with egg, and prove. Spice, however, is very seldom used, as it tends to darken the buns, and thus giving them a poor appearance. An ingenious apparatus has been invented called a Patent Bun Divider, which greatly facilitates the making of these buns, and cannot fail to be of great service where large quantities of buns or cakes are required to be divided. All that is needed is to weigh 8 lbs. of dough, place it in the pan, and at one stroke of a lever thirty buns or cakes are divided ready to mould.
21.—Chelsea Buns.
Take plain bun dough (or if for common buns, bread dough), roll it out in a sheet, break some firm butter in small pieces and place over it, roll it out as you would paste; after you have given it two or three turns, moisten the surface of the dough, and strew over it some moist sugar; roll up the sheet into a roll, and cut it in slices; or cut the dough in strips of the required size and turn them round; place on buttered tins having edges, half-an-inch from each. Prove them well, and bake in a moderate oven. They may be dusted with loaf sugar either before or after they are baked. The quantity of ingredients used must be regulated by the required richness of the buns. ½ lb. of butter, ½ lb. of sugar, with 4 lb. of dough, will make a good bun. When bun dough is used, half the quantity of sugar will be sufficient; some omit it altogether.