Making good buns
Here are some general tips for making memorable buns.

Be generous with all the enriching ingredients: an extra egg; 10-15% more butter than normal; 20% more fruit (currants, sultanas, etc.; a little extra spice. [Remember – adding egg and butter may mean you have to call up a little more flour].

Spices: you are rewarded if you grind them on the baking day, everything is so zingy and flavoursome. In my bakery I would ask all staff to put in an extra hour right before bun season, and out would come the old coffee grinders. There would ensue a frenzy of grinding and sieving, followed by re-grinding of the coarse bits caught in the sieves . Gradually a huge mound of freshly ground spices would rise on a large sheet of brown paper on the work table. About two kilos or more.

Here’s my favourite blend: allspice and cloves are the hotties, and when eating the bun they hit the tongue and the front of the mouth! Be careful not to overdo them…

nutmeg, cinnamon, & cumin are the sweeter and more gentle ones, and they comprise the bulk of the mix

a little more depth and warmth? add ground ginger

Ferment your dough as for normal buns, remembering that with such a rich and spiced dough it is best to watch that the first rise achieves less puffiness than a normal bread dough. For such rich doughs I would always make a ferment (in the English baker’s lexicon a ferment = wet sponge, highly yeasted).

Crossing. See the photo at the top. Keep the piping nozzle well above the buns as you swish along. The buns must be placed on the trays in neat rows to enable accurate piping.

The Piping Mix. It should be runny, like a batter that falls easily from the whisk when it is raised above the mix. Don’t select a wide nozzle, but it should not be too thin. The nozzle I like to use is 4mm. The runny mix and the width of nozzle means that you should only need to squeeze the piping bag gently to have it streaming out. Here’s the mix:

100 gm bread flour

100 gm plain flour

Rub into the flours half a tablespoon of veg oil

450-500 ml water

Beat with a whisk into a smooth batter

Red dyed eggs for Greek Easter plaits (tsoureki)
A rich burgundy red, these dyed eggs are sunk into easily expanded gaps between the strands of the enriched 3-strand plait that is the normal style of this bread.

The photo below shows them ready for final proving, each plait getting one egg, but you can insert two or three into the plait if you like. The dyed eggs have to be inserted fairly deeply to avoid them exploding in the oven.

Here is the recipe for the dye, a simple and natural affair that you would find cloth and wool dyers have used for millenia. In the kitchen save your onion skins for a week or two.

TO MAKE RED EGGS

12 uncooked eggs

skins from 15 Spanish onions (brown)

2 tabspns white vinegar

4½ cups water

Put skins, vinegar and water in a saucepan, bring to boil, simmer for 30 minutes. It will look orange.

Strain into a glass/ceramic bowl (plastic gets stained)

In a stainless steel pan, add cooled, strained dye and the eggs – in one layer totally covered by dye.

Boil over medium heat, cover and simmer 12-15 minutes to redden the eggs. Take out the eggs with a slotted spoon.

When the eggs are dry gently coat them with veg oil. One way to do this would be to rub them with an oil-soaked piece of kitchen paper.

In our series on Table Skills, moulding for a tin is a continuation of the discipline of rolling dough into a tight cylinder. Achieving the tight cylinder is the final action.

Begin by turning the piece out onto the table with its rough side facing up. Proceed to pat out any gas as well as stretch the piece sideways, as shown in the first two pics.

Now you do what, with students, I call a “flip-flop”: turn one end inwards, the other folded over it, so that each movement denotes one-third of the width, as these two pics show.

Before the tight rolling of the cylinder, a preparatory step is to turn it over at the top towards you to have it ready for the rolling. See pic:

And now for the tight rolling. Thumbs have to be placed wide and flat as they exert pressure that ensures the rolling is tight and efficient. Next two pics are the view from each side

As the pressure of the flat thumbs is released you roll it up towards you just a little with the outspread fingers, then return to the flat/wide thumbs position to keep it tight. The action is jerky as you gently push with the fingers, release, then roll a little. Continue with a few of these jerky actions until it is entirely rolled up into a cylinder, as shown in next two pics. Third and final pic shows it being picked up, seam down, to be placed in the tin.

Happy moulding!
Paul

I received this method from the first wily old baker that I employed in my own first bakery. As he gave it to me all he said was – here’s a good method that lets you work in all the off-cuts.

SWEET PASTRY for 40 small mince pies
This recipe is a professional baker’s method. It is capable of being worked and mixed again and again, so that the off-cuts from each session of cutting bases and lids from a sheet of pastry can be returned to the mass, and the whole batch mixed again to incorporate these off-cuts. Surprisingly, this endless remixing can be achieved without the pastry toughening and shrinking.

Take the butter cold from the refrigerator.

Mix together:

500 gm flour – not very strong 600 gm cold butter 350 gm sugar

Add, and mix in thoroughly 100 ml water + vanilla

Add, and mix thoroughly 500 gm flour

It is now ready to use. Off-cuts can be mixed back into the batch by hand or machine.

Christmas MINCE PIE filling
150 gm suet or 125 ml veg oil

300 gm diced apple

150 gm brown sugar

150 gm sultanas

150 gm currants

100 gm raisins

50 gm diced peel

brandy

spice

zest and juice of a lemon

BAKER’S TOPIC – final cob tightening

During the last Baker’s Topic you were shown how to form a cob.
Now we are going to take it a step further by showing how you you rub the piece forwards up the table to make it properly tight as a finished shape should be.
The first pic shows the beginning of the stroke:

See the tension being placed on the piece as it is rubbed forward, the puffy part of the hand where the thumb meets the palm is doing the work. Pay careful attention to: making sure you keep to the very bottom the gathered clump of ragged edges that have been turned inwards by the cob shaping; avoid hooking your hand around at the end of the stroke – your hand must thrust forwards only. There must be no dusting flour on the bench, otherwise you skid in the dust, achieving nothing. Without dust, the bottom of the piece slightly sticks to the bench, increasing the needed tension.

The forward rubbing features a steep hand, with the hand on edge, open palm, a vertical line from little finger to thumb. You push forward as well as pulling downwards on the piece as it is stroked forward. (The other hand is held aside, doing nothing at this point, indeed superfluous).

As it thrusts forward, the hand goes slightly past the piece. When the piece has been thrust so far forward that you are a little awkward and off balance, and you run the risk of pushing it off its axis so that the rough patch is no longer at the bottom, you must stop the forward stroking.

The above shows that you now grip it with both hands and tug it backwards so that it is close to you, and your hand is in a comfortable position to begin the forward thrusting again, as below:

Now you have all the tricks to give any cob a final tightening.
Good baking, Paul

This Baker’s Topic is in two parts really. The first part given here is about making a cob, or round shape. Professional bakers teach themselves to have one piece in each hand so that the time taken to complete the task at least produces two, not just one. In this pic the action has just started and soon the hands will pump the dough around, each revolving in a different direction.

Rolling dough pieces into a loose ball to set them aside to rest (“intermediate proof”) requires a less thorough approach when compared with the tightness of the rolling that is required by a finished cob loaf.
The instruction given now is a series of hand movements that amount to a slow and meticulous deconstruction of the terse and rapid action of the two-handed pro. PANARY students attending a conventional yeast course where the cob is on the programme will be familiar with it, and will have learnt the chant of the repeated “12 to 6, quarter-turn”. Making a tight cob belongs to the world of conventional yeast baking, where gluten is strong and shapes are finished tight. Not so suited to the world of sourdough baking when expulsion of gas is less desirable.

“12 to 6, quarter turn”

Returning to working on one piece, learning the actions of “12 to 6, quarter-turn”, the cycle begins by taking the resting piece, turning it over so that the rough parts are facing upwards, then pat out the gas as shown in the next pic:

After removing the gas, you grip it at 12 o’clock and bring it over towards you to place it at 6:

Push it down firmly to seal it, then proceed to the quarter-turn:

Back to the new 12 o’clock, and repeat the two main actions several times, and by the time you have performed four or five of the 12 to 6 and quarter-turn rotations (always rotate in the same direction), you will achieve a surprisingly round piece. The final 12 to 6 brings it to this:

Hey presto you have achieved a neat cob!
Next newsletter – the action of rubbing the cob up the table so that it is superbly tight.
Good baking! Paul