We asked baker Michael Hanson to search out and compare the best and worst in Hot Cross Buns
above, all that plastic but are they an Easter treat or a horror story? Michael Hanson did what any man would do, sacrificing his digestion for the sake of knowledge and eating his way through the hot cross buns of Britain
ot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns, one a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns”. Except that at Harvey Nichols, the ultra-swish London department store, they cost £1; a pound a pop! But head down to your local supermarket and you could pay as little as 10p. Now, it is said that quality comes at a price but is such a differential worth it? Is the cheapest so unbearably bad? And the most expensive: ostentatiously overpriced, or worth every penny?
My task is to find out. Is there such a thing as “The Best Hot Cross Bun in Britain”? As an experienced baker I feel well qualified to undertake such a mission. I was putting paper crosses on hot cross buns (HXBs) before I left junior school. I even remember the practice of placing little metal crosses on slowly proved buns and removing them after baking, leaving a pale, shadowy imprint of a cross.
above, straight from the oven at home, these buns look perfect, puffed and golden with the pale crosses standing out clearly
Easter was a very special time for me, out-of-school hours spent in a cramped, old fashioned bakery, one-speed Artifex mixers, an antique Alfred Hunt drawplate oven, washing, cleaning and drying fruit in the hot flour loft above the bakery. I ate so many sultanas it’s a wonder I could manage a single bun. But when they came out the oven, oh, the smell and sight of 500 HXBs on the drawplate. They couldn’t cool down quick enough! They were heaven-made bread. I wouldn’t care when the old bakers told me I would get indigestion from eating them while hot. We didn’t have to glaze them, so golden were these objects of my desire.
My father and grandfather were bread bakers and I continued the tradition, baking all through my teenage years and into my twenties and thirties. Now I just bake for friends and pass on my knowledge. Is it possible to find the bun of my childhood: soft, warm, yeasty, aromatic, and more-ish? Will I find a bun that can be eaten warm from the oven, utterly butterless? Is it all just rose-tinted nostalgia? Does the Holy Grail of buns still exist or will I have to dig out my grandfather’s recipe and make my own? Whatever the outcome, I needed to find out.
The British love their HXBs. The condition we now find them in is a perfect symbol of the state of so much of our national food culture, even more so than the oft used example of the white sliced loaf. Our buns have become commoditized, bastardized, mechanized, and entirely ‘secularised’. Supermarkets compete to sell the cheapest, sometimes using them as a “loss leader” (where goods are sold at less than their cost price, because they can lure in customers and generate other business), leaving the industrial bakeries which compete to manufacture them with little or no profit.
above, glazed with a sugar wash and cooling on a rack, these HXB are just what I wanted
An automated factory is easily capable of churning out up to a million buns a day, with little or no human input save button pushers. The UK baking industry’s journal, British Baker magazine, said back in January 2007 “The UK is the world’s bargain basement for bread according to new figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit.” A situation that benefits neither UK manufacturer nor consumer. Our bun has been bastardized beyond belief, filled full of “necessary” chemical improvers and cheap sub-standard ingredients, pumped full of air and water, giving us the crumbly, cakey, emulsified pap that too often passes for an Easter bun.
Many non-Christian cultures revere bread as a gift fit for a Goddess, and for millennia have made sacred breads as reminders and/or offerings. Ancient cultures honoured the fertility of Mother Earth and the gift of fire with sacred and seasonal ceremonies. Then later, the Christian church continued these traditions and the Eucharist was respected with a symbolic ‘cake’. Today in many European countries, people still bake breads at home in a reverential way, to be blessed and offered to the community. Our HXB was a direct relation to these ‘eulogia’.
Any crumbs of our former sacred and blessed respect for food have long since been swept away from Britain’s dinner table by a public that has little respect for the earth, let alone the baker’s craft. What does our supermarket bun tell us about the state of our culture? Has our society become cheap, imitative, soulless and devoid of taste? Baking is a passion and we should find and support bakers who try to bake our daily bread in a considered and thoughtful manner.
So I set out to try and find the cheapest, the priciest, as well as the tastiest HXB. What makes a good HXB? Here are my eight points:
1. A bun that is round and domed, not flat and square
2. A bun that is evenly- and well-baked to a deep golden colour
3. The crumb should have a soft-bread texture: that is, one that tears into flaky wisps of crumb rather than crumbles into sawdust or crushes into pap.
4. After being squeezed gently between the fingers, the bun should inflate again.
5. A bun that can be cut without crumbling, toasted without burning and buttered without disintegrating
6. A bun with ample fleshy fruit and peel, with genuine spice that allures not repels, that doesn’t taste of chemicals, burn your tongue or linger in your mouth hours after eating
7. A good cross, one you can pick off, short not chewy.
8. All this at a price most people in the street can afford.
above, the heart of a good hot cross bun
My odyssey began in London’s Knightsbridge in that temple of conspicuous consumption, Harrods, and from that luxury point encompassed the full spectrum of price and prestige. I can see that the homogenization of the high street made my task harder. Some small local bakeries still make a decent HXB, often at a fair price, but many lack the skills, and use bought in premixes (packets that combine other ingredients to make the baking easier) that simply need adding to a bag of flour, a block of yeast and a bucket of water – the fruit goes in later.
I found a good one at Dunns in London’s Crouch End for 60p. Greggs, Britain’s High Street baker is producing a very passable bun that is a credit to the remnants of the once proud Master Bakers of Britain. It lacked a generosity in spice and fruit but at only 25p it gets my vote so far.
As my search continued, I posted my findings in the Forum
If you find a better bun, or even want to report a bad one, join me there.
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