Yeast – Deja Food

Georgian Cross Buns

Reading a handwritten manuscript is very exciting: you never know what is just over the next page.

Lately I have been reading through the manuscripts held by the National Library of Scotland and alighted upon something rather unusual. It is a manuscript from a bakery, with appropriately large batch quantities. It is a fascinating peek into the variety of bakes and extras that formed the day to day offerings of a Georgian bakery.

The manuscript has been dated to 1827, which puts it slap-bang in the middle of the reign of George IV, but other than that, there appears to be no other identifying information. Now this might be looked upon as more than a little frustrating, however, being much more of a glass-half-full person, I usually see it as an opportunity for sleuthing, and seeing whether or not I can glean any more information from the pages within.

Firstly, I think the date is very well chosen, and I’m sure the Library of Scotland is nothing short of THRILLED at my approbation. This I deduced from the raising agents used in the recipes, which call either for yeast or volatile salts. Volatile salts are the precursor to baking powder, which was only a mere fifteen years away from being invented.

Another piece of information I noted gave me reason to believe that there may well be a Scottish link, aside from where the manuscript is currently held, is the use of ‘carvey’ for caraway seeds. In the 18th century, the word was in much greater use throughout the British Isles, but in the 19th century, it was retained mostly in Scotland. The one thing holding me back from declaring this a definite is the Englishness of the other recipes: Abernathy biscuits, Bath cakes and buns, Weymouth biscuits, Stratford cakes, Norwish biscuits, Isle of Wight cracknels…

The recipes themselves cover a wide range of items: biscuits, cakes, buns, jams and jellies, sweeties, custards, bread, muffins and cakes. I love this manuscript for its sheer uniqueness. I have a small but favourite collection of commercial baking books dating from around the turn of the 20th century, but I’ve not come across any other handwritten recipes of catering size quantities of this early age. Browsing for something for Easter, I came across this recipe for Buns for Shops or Cross Buns. Perfect!

But it came at a price. And the price was the spelling.

Oh my dears, the spelling.

I fully appreciate that spelling from 200 years ago is going to be a little quirky, but this… This is on a whole new level.

Cross Buns Manuscript Recipe, National Library Scotland

In case your cursive reading skills are a little rusty, allow me to transcribe the recipe for you, with the original spelling.

Bunds for shops or Cross Bunds
Fursttake 1″ of billed pertters smashed & stured into one Quort of alfmilk & worme warter & 1/4 ozns of volington salts & 1/2 ozns of Cours suger & alfa pinte of small beere yeast & robe that all throwe a sive & wisk into it a littell flor & put that way for sponge & when it is Quite ready take 1 1/2″ of coures suger & 1 1/4″ of butter & Corrents & gronde spiceses & 15 drops of lamon & fine cute Candy lamon pale & that all robed into 7″ of flor & make bayin the flor so O & pit in the spunge into it & make that into doy & moled oup ronde to sieses & Cut or Croossed with Croos so + & tined on grees tinds & well waish the tops all over with Eggs & milk & proved well & baked in a sharpe ovend & not backed too drey & bite of loaf suger put into the waish & waish the tops all over with it & toke of tinds & keep Drey & Claine.

The modern translation is as follows:

Buns for shops or Cross Buns
First take 1lb of boiled potatoes mashed & stirred into one Quart of half milk & warm water & ¼ oz of volatile salts & ½ oz of Coarse sugar & half a pint of small beer yeast & rub that all through a sieve & whisk into it a little flour & put that away for sponge & when it is Quite ready take 1½lb of coarse sugar & 1¼lb of butter & Currants & ground spices & 15 drops of lemon & fine cut Candied lemon peel & that all rubbed into 7lb of flour & make a bay in the flour so – O – & put the sponge into it & make that into dough & mould it up round to size & Cut or Cross with a Cross so + & put them on greased tins & well wash the tops all over with Eggs & milk & prove well & bake in a sharp oven & don’t bake too dry & add a bit of loaf sugar into the wash & wash the tops all over with it & take them off the tins & keep them Dry & Clean.

Yes, that first ingredient is boiled potatoes, and I will freely admit it took me a good half hour of pondering and saying the phrase out loud to myself in a frankly embarrassing number of accents in order to try and work out what it might be. Adding mashed, boiled potatoes to a bread recipe helps keep the resulting buns from drying out too quickly and keeps them pleasantly chewy. ‘Volington Salts’ makes me chuckle, because it sounds like the name of a Georgian Dandy.

The travails of translating the handwriting aside, there are two aspects of this recipe that I love. Firstly, it is the unusual (to modern palates) combination of spicings and flavourings. The recipe calls for both lemon essence and candied lemon peel as well as ‘mixed spices’. I’ve also made some biscuits from this book which called for cinnamon and lemon, and maybe its because this combination seemed so unusual to my 21st century palate, but to me they tasted Georgian. The ‘mixed spices’ gives you carte blanch to use whatever combination you like, but I’m going to recommend cinnamon and nutmeg, which were a popular combination for decades in the 17th and 18th centuries. The lemon flavouring, for some reason, I found problematic: liquid flavouring seemed to fade when baked, so I tried using finely grated fresh lemon zest, which also didn’t have quite the punch I was looking for. Perhaps a combination of the two will give the lemon burst I think these might need – but if we hang around for me to trial that, we’d miss Easter, so onwards!

Georgian Cross Buns

This is a 1/7th scale of the original recipe, and will make 18 x 60g buns. If this is a bit much, halve the recipe and divide the dough into 8 buns. Make a sponge if you feel inclined, but I went for mixing all together at once.

70g cooked mashed potatoes
100ml milk
100ml water
450g flour
7g sachet of fast action yeast
100g caster sugar
80g butter
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp lemon flavouring and/or zest of 1 lemon
60g fine sliced candied lemon peel
125g currants

For the glaze
1 large egg
1/2 an eggshell of milk
2tbs caster sugar

Heat the milk and water to blood temperature.
Add the cooked potato and whisk together – a stick whisk works well to make the mixture smooth.
Put the flour, yeast, sugar, butter, spices and lemon flavouring(s) into a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Put the liquid mixture into a mixing bowl and add the dry mixture on top.
Knead for 10 minutes. Don’t be tempted to add more liquid – there’s moisture in the butter and the working of the dough will bring that out and make a dough that ‘cleans the bowl’.
When the dough has come together and is smooth and elastic, mix in the currants and lemon peel.
Cover the bowl with plastic and set aside in a warm place to double in size. If your kitchen is on the cool side, use your oven: Turn the heat to 170°C/150°C Fan for TWO MINUTES ONLY, switch off, and place your bowl inside. Due to the enrichments of butter and sugar, this may take longer than normal, probably closer to 90 minutes.
Tip out the risen dough and gently deflate by pressing with the hands.
Divide your dough by weight: 60g makes a decent-sized bun, but go larger if you prefer a more substantial bun.
Roll the dough into a smooth ball, press flat with the palm of your hand, then arrange on a parchment-lined baking sheet at least 3cm apart.
Cover lightly with plastic and allow to rise a second time (30-45 minutes).
Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
When the buns are sufficiently risen, cut a cross into them. I find pressing (not rolling) a pizza wheel down into the buns is an ideal tool for this: it marks a deep cross, but doesn’t cut through the edges of the bun and cause them to split during baking. Alternatively, use the flat end of a spatula.
Whisk the egg and milk together, and glaze the buns by brushing the mixture over them using a pastry brush.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on size. For the smaller 60g buns 15 minutes is fine. If your buns are larger, then leave them for 20 minutes. Turn the baking sheet around halfway though.
While the buns are baking, add 2tbs caster sugar to the remaining bun wash and stir to dissolve.
When the buns are baked and golden brown, remove from the oven and place the baking sheet on a rack. Brush the hot buns over with the sweetened bun wash. The heat of the buns will set the sweetened glaze, and your cross buns will cool with a lovely shine.
Remove the buns from the baking sheet when cool and store in an airtight container.
Serving suggestion: Delicious when freshly baked. When cooled, cut in half and toast both sides. Serve warm with butter and a sharp cheddar cheese.

Ouse Bridge Cakes

18th century, Bread, Small Cakes, Yeast

I love coming across a geographically-named recipe. It gives a place and time in which to ground the dish: Grasmere Gingerbread, Cornish Pasties, Chelsea Buns.

Almost better yet, is discovering a recipe that is also unknown today, having gone out of fashion or due to some other circumstance. Such is Ouse Bridge Cakes.

There’s practically no information available about these bakes. In “The Gentlewoman’s Kitchen” (1984), Peter Brears suggests Ouse Bridge Cakes are a yeast dough flavoured with mace, cloves and nutmeg and mixed with sugar and milk. In his book “Secret York” (2014), author Paul Chrystal writes:

“Ouse Bridge Cakes, known in the eighteenth century, a type of Yorkshire tea cake.”

And that’s pretty much it. Not much to go on at all.

Luckily, in my scouring of old manuscripts, I have turned up five, different, eighteenth-century Ouse Bridge Cake recipes. I reasoned that, within their pages lay an understanding of what constituted the original Ouse Bridge Cakes.

But first, a little history. The bridge over the River Ouse that this recipe refers refers to is in the city of York. Although there have been many bridges over the centuries, it is the fourth Ouse Bridge (1565–1810) which has been commemorated in these buns.

Old Ouse Bridge from the South. T.Taylor, 1806.

Just as with many city bridges of the time, the Ouse bridge was heavily built-up, its five arches supporting substantial buildings on both sides of it’s towering centre arch.

Old Ouse Bridge from the North. Attrib. Henry Cave (British 1779-1836)

With all this busyness on the bridge, it is likely that there were businesses too, and if not a baker’s shop, then almost certainly a stall or street hawkers. Just as Wood Street Cake (see Great British Bakes) took its name from the London street where it was made, Ouse Bridge Cakes take theirs from the place where they could be bought, if not actually baked.

As already mentioned, Ouse Bridge cakes were a spiced bun. But seeing as Yorkshire has quite a reputation for similar items – the most well-known being the Yorkshire Teacake (as with all tea cakes, best eaten toasted and buttered) – it occurred to me that there must be something to distinguish the Ouse Bridge cake from a host of other buns, and that something was probably its shape. A bun of a particular shape is instantly recognisabe – just look at modern Chelsea Buns and their square, spiralled form (which isn’t the original shape – but don’t get me started, see Great British Bakes (again)).

Luckily, there were two of the five recipes (yes, remember them? Back before the detour?) that held clues. The first was in a manuscrpt dating from the mid-eighteenth century, which suggested the dough be weighed out into 8oz (225g) pieces before being shaped.

Ouse Bridge Cakes recipe, MS3498, (1750-1900) Wellcome Collection.

The second piece of information was from a manuscript dated 1750, the last line of which reads “make it up round in ye middle”.

Ouse Bridge Cakes recipe from MS4645, (1750-1853), Wellcome Collection.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and decided it meant to shape it like a bagel/ring donut. I also asked online, and the feedback was that it might mean something cottage-loaf-esque, so I experimented with both shapes. I still think the ‘hole in the middle’ is a better fit for the description, but until more recipes are rediscovered, the jury will have to remain resolutely out.

Of course, it might well be that none of these five recipes are the definitive, perfect Ouse Bridge Cakes. Back in the day, even the moderately wealthy (such as the authors of these manuscripts) didn’t necessarily bake for themselves: practically everyone bought their bread from a baker. The recipes that we find in manuscripts are attempts to copy, on a smaller scale, something enjoyed elsewhere, so that they can be enjoyed in their own homes. The five recipes in the manuscripts were all different, yet there were some uniting features, as each author tried to recreate something they had only tasted. Firstly, all of them had currants, ranging from a spartan few ounces to almost half the total weight of the ingredients. All of them were flavoured with spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mace), but nutmeg was a common denominator amongst all five. All of them were enriched with milk and either butter or cream, and most had added sugar.

The recipe below is very much a Goldilocks version of them all. Neither too much nor too little of everything, because recipe testing revealed certain flaws in the versions that veered towards the extreme. The overly-fruited buns were heavy and close textured, and those buns with generous/excessive additions of butter and cream were reluctant to rise, with a rather greasy taste.

This version is moderately fruited, moderatly enriched and moderately spiced. Delicious warm from the oven, and even more so toasted, with slabs of cold, mature Cheddar cheese (it’s a taste sensation!).

Ouse Bridge Cakes

Each bun is formed from a generous 75g of dough, and I have scaled the quantities down to make a very modest seven buns per batch. Feel free to double the recipe as you see fit. The spicing is just a suggestion: change things up if you have a favourite mix.

225g flour
1 sachet fast-action yeast.
180ml milk
15g sugar
30g unsalted butter
60g currants
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground mace
1 large egg for glazing

Put the milk, sugar and butter in a pan and scald. IMPORTANT Scalding is when the milk almost boils, but not quite. Heat it until it bubbles around the edges (or in the middle if you have an induction hob), then remove from the heat and allow to cool down. Scalding milk breaks down the proteins, which will allow your buns to remain soft and yielding, even when cold. Using 100% unscalded milk in a dough recipe can lead to heaviness.
When the milk mixture has cooled to blood temperature, pour it into your mixing bowl.
Sift the flour, yeast and spices together and add to the milk mixture.
Knead the mixture by hand or on the lowest possible speed on your stand mixer for 10 minutes. increase speed to high for up to 2 minutes, or until the mixture comes together in a clean ball.
Add the currants and fold them in.
Cover the bowl with cling film. The milk, butter and sugar will make the dough slower to rise that a regular dough, so allow at least 90 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.
Tip out the dough and divide into seven pieces, each of roughly 75 grams. There’s no need to get all aggressive and start punching it: it will naturally deflate with the turning out.
Shape the dough as you see fit. In addition to the two shapes mentioned above, you can also shape them into a regular teacake shape. NB: If you’re going for the cottage loaf shape, I recommend baking the shaped dough in cupcake tins, which really lets the dough ‘sit up’ and hold it’s shape. I used silicone baking trays rather than metal, to keep the dough from forming too crusty an outside.
Set aside to rise for 40 minutes.
When the dough has risen, whisk the egg and brush over the buns with a pastry brush.
Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
Bake the buns for 20 minutes, turning the baking trays/sheets after 10 minutes to ensure even baking.
When cooked and golden brown, transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Hot Cross Buns

19th century, 20th century, Bread, Yeast

More interesting than toast, not as rich as cake, what’s not to love about a bun? The buns traditionally served towards then end of Lent are… well now, here’s the thing. They go by many names. Most people might think, as the title above implies, that they’re Hot Cross Buns, but that’s not strictly accurate. “Hot Cross Buns!” was originally the cry of the street vendors who sold Cross Buns – hot. Recipes also appear under the name “Good Friday Buns” and “Easter Buns”.

Interestingly, Cross Buns weren’t originally fruited, only spiced – and thanks to an edict from Queen Elizabeth I, could only be sold on Good Friday, Christmas and for funerals.

“That no baker or other person or persons shall at any time or times hereafter, make,
utter or sell by retail within or without their houses, unto any the queen’s subjects,
any spice cakes, buns, bisket or other spice bread (being bread out of size, and not by
law allowed), except it be at burials, or upon the Friday before Easter, or at Christmas;
upon pain of forfeiture of all such spice bread to the poor.”
John Powell, The Assyse of Breade, 1595

Fruit gradually crept into recipes from about the middle of the 19th century, presumably as industrialization and improved transport links brought foodstuffs from far flung places to the UK cheaper and quicker, all to make for a really indulgent treat after the privations of Lent.

This recipe comes from a very favourite author of mine: Frederick T. Vine. Doyen of numerous professional books for the baker and confectioner. This is his own personal recipe, scaled down from a recipe in which quantities such as pounds and quarts were bandied about, and a full batch of which would produce almost 650 penny buns. The quantities below will make about 12 x 100g buns, more if you drop the weight down to 85 grams. This might seem a large amount, but they can be gifted to friends and family, or easily frozen to enjoy at a later date.

The buns are enriched with milk, butter and egg and are packed with bags of fruit and spice. The original recipe also includes malt extract, which gives a wonderfully rich flavour, but isn’t usually something you find in the supermarket, so you can improvise by adding some powdered Ovaltine to the mixing liquid if you have difficulty sourcing it. You can omit it altogether if liked.

The original recipe suggested using flavouring essences of lemon and ‘spice’. I happened to have some lemon flavouring, but no ‘spice’, so I used regular ground spices. Reading an inordinately large number of baking books as I do, I’ve noticed that the use of essences is very prevalent in commercial baking mixtures. The reason seems to be that regular ground spices darken the dough, which is assumed to be unappealing to the customer. This opinion contrasts greatly with the fact that, for example, in modern times the appearance of the seeds in vanilla-flavoured items today are celebrated – how things change! Personally, I like the authentic appearance of the dark flecks of spice, not to mention the flavour. Feel free to go with your own blend of spices, but I really like the punchiness of the quantities below. After all, no-one likes a bland spice bun – if you’re promised spice, you want to be able to taste it.

These buns have a sweetened, tinted glaze to be painted on after they are baked. It uses gelatine to give shine without the stickiness. If you’re not keen on using gelatine and don’t mind a little stickiness with your shine, then omit the gelatine, swap the water for milk and warm to dissolve the sugar.

Hot Cross Buns

I’ve gone for a mixture of spices, but it is traditional to only use allspice. If you’d prefer this flavouring, I suggest just 1½tsp ground allspice, as it is quite potent.

I’ve switched around the method a little to make for a more straightforward approach.

180ml water
90g unsalted butter, cubed
15g malt extract OR 2tbs Ovaltine
180ml milk
30ml of beaten egg, from1 large egg
135g soft brown sugar
½tsp salt
1 sachet fast-acting yeast
30g mixed orange/lemon peel, finely sliced/chopped
180g currants
1/2tsp lemon flavouring OR zest of 1 lemon
1tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground mace
½tsp ground allspice
½tsp ground mixed spice
500g strong white flour

Pre-bake Glaze
30ml beaten egg(from above)
30ml milk

Post-Bake Glaze
1 sheet gelatine (or vegetarian equivalent)
100ml cold water
2tbs caster sugar
1tsp treacle

Heat the water, butter and malt/Ovaltine until steaming and the butter melted, then add the (cold) milk. This should bring the temperature down to just warm.
Whisk in the egg, sugar, salt, lemon flavouring if using, and yeast.
Pour the warm mixture into a bowl.
Sift together the flour and spices and add to the bowl.
Knead into a soft and supple dough, about 10 mins.
Knead in the currants, zest if using, and peel, cover with plastic, and set to rise. Because of the enriched nature of this dough, this will take slightly longer than usual, about 1½ hours.
When the dough is risen, turn out onto a floured work surface and pat to deflate.
Weigh off the dough into 100g pieces, and then roll and shape each into a smooth ball.
Line a deep-sided baking tin with parchment.
Place the balls of dough into the pan, pressing with the flat of the had as you do so, to flatten them into discs about 2cm thick. Place these ‘cakes’ about 1cm apart from one another. This will mean they touch as they prove, giving a soft ‘kissing crust’ on each side and a rounded sqare shape.
Cut a cross into each bun using a dough cutter or similar. NB Take care not to cut all the way through, just deep enough so that the dough will stay apart during baking, preserving the cross.
Cover lightly with a cloth to rise for 30 minutes.
Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan. This is a slightly hotter temperature than usual for buns (180°C, 160°C Fan), because the sides of the tin will block direct heat, and the buns will therefore need cooking a little longer.
Pre-bake Glaze: Whisk the remaining egg with the milk and brush over the tops of the buns.
Bake for 20 minutes until risen and browned. Turn the tin around after 10 minutes to ensure even baking.
While the buns are baking, prepare the gelatine glaze. Soak the gelatine sheet in the water until softened. Heat gently to dissolve the gelatine, then stir in the treacle and sugar. Continue stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
When the buns are baked, remove from the oven and brush over with the glaze.
Cover lightly with a cloth and allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes. The cloth will keep the steam close, making for a soft crust.
After 15 minutes uncover the buns and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. If you leave them to cool completely in the tin, they’re prone to sogginess.
To serve: Cut in half and toast both sides. When toasted, spread with salted butter. For added decadence, add some slices of vintage cheddar cheese. The contrasts between the hot spicy bread, the fruit, the richness of the butter and the sharp, cool and creamy tang of the cheese is sublime.

Chelsea Buns

19th century, Yeast

Back in 2013 I wrote an article on the history of Chelsea Buns, ultimately included in my book Great British Bakes which culminated in a recipe suggestion for the original Chelsea Buns.

I based the recipe on anecdotes that appeared in various publications on the borough of Chelsea and its surroundings, mostly written in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

“Before me appeared the shops so famed for Chelsea buns, which, for above thirty years, I have never passed without filling my pockets…. …….These buns have afforded a competency, and even wealth; to four generations of the same family; and it is singular, that their delicate flavour, lightness and richness, have never been successfully imitated.”ⁱ

“To be good, it should be made with a good deal of butter, be very light and eat hot”ⁱⁱ

“The old Chelsea Buns were greatly in demand and were a superior kind to our common buns, more like Bath Buns. Old people say they were very rich and seemed full of butter. They were square in form and were made with eggs, with the kind of sugar, lemon and spice but without fruit.”ⁱⁱⁱ

“Note that the true Chelsea Bun of the Hands family was by no means the darksome and dismal lump which is now sold us as a hot cross bun. On the contrary, it was specially famous for its flaky lightness and delicate flavour.”^iv

“It was not round, but square in shape, and it came into the world in batches, the several individuals crammed as close together as the cells of a honeycomb…..Excellent they were—light, sweet, glistening as to their crowns in a sort of sugary varnish, and easy of digestion.”^v

There was no mention of the fruit which adorns the modern version of the bun, neither was there mention of the spiral. The recipe I came up with was therefore fruitless and a regular bun shape. I couldn’t quite let go of the iconic spiral shape, though, so baked a version in this shape, too. Below is one of the original photographs taken for the book.

Fast forward to 2020 and last week I discovered a recipe for Chelsea Buns in a manuscript (MS10979) held by the National Library of Scotland. This was very exciting, because the manuscript was dated circa 1827, which is a time when the original Chelsea Bun House was still in business. (It was eventually torn down in 1839). Prior to this, the earliest recipe available had been the one published in 1854 in George Read’s The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker’s Assistant (p103).

Recipe for Chelsea Buns from a c1827 anonymous manuscript (MS10979) at the National Library of Scotland.

The recipe itself is rather challenging to read, but there are a couple of details that I think deserve pointing out. The recipe title “Chelsea Bunds for shops” suggests that the recipe was for an independant baker, who sold his/her wares wholesale. Perhaps s/he only had a baking premises and not a shopfront. The other detail is the tiny diagram on the bottom left of the page, showing how the buns are to be laid out: laying the buns like this will ensure the characteristic square shape once the dough has risen.

As luck would have it, and paraphrasing the well-known bus analogy, you wait seven years for a recipe, and then two come along at once. Also last week I spotted another early Chelsea Bun recipe, which had heretofore hidden from my internet searching by the cunning ruse of calling itself Chelsea Bunns. It appears in A Treatise on Confectionary, in all its branches, with practical notes, etc (1817) by Joseph BELL (p36, see below).

The previous recipe referred to is one for London Buns – flour, sugar, butter, yeast, and no spice. The shaping of the buns in this recipe is also unusual: I’ve never heard of Chelsea Buns being diamond-shaped, and it makes me wonder whether the author was confusing them with another bun, and if so, which?

I used to be rather evangelical about recipes for things being the PROPER recipe. Seven years ago, I was very firm in my conviction that a fruitless Chelsea Bun was the PROPER recipe and the fruit-filled, overblown, too-heavily-glazed monstrosities on sale in bakeries were borderline abominations. Now I’m much more laid back, having come to understand that, just like us, recipes have a lifespan, some longer than others, over the course of which changes happen. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the light and gently-spiced Chelsea Buns were extremely popular. Over time, personal taste, or possibly economics (costs of dried fruit & sugar) saw a change to fruit-filled buns being favourite. It is absolutely possible to like one style of Chelsea Bun over another, and liking one style doesn’t invalidate the other in the slightest.

So enjoy whatever floats your boat – or in this instance, fills your bun.

Chelsea Buns

This recipe doesn’t contain any lemon, as mentioned in one of the anecdotes. Since it was the only reference I found that did mention lemon, I’m reserving judgement on whether it was a regular ingredient in the original. However, if you’d like to include some, I suggest the zest of one lemon, and just one teaspoon of spice.

1 sachet fast-action yeast
150ml hot water
150ml milk
500g strong bread flour
75g unsalted butter
110g soft brown sugar
2tsp mixed spice

150g melted butter for glazing

1 large egg
50ml milk

3-4tbs icing sugar

Mix the milk and water together, then add the yeast, 1tsp of sugar (from the listed amount) and 3-4tbs of flour (again from the given amount).
Whisk all together thoroughly, and stand aside for 15 minutes until the mixture starts to froth.
Put the rest of the flour, sugar, butter and spice in a food processor and blitz until thoroughly mixed.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients and knead for 10 minutes. Add more flour if the mixture seems a little too soft. If using a machine with a dough hook, make the last 2 minutes maximum speed, to pull the dough together.
Tip out the dough and roll into a thin (5-10mm) sheet on a floured surface.
Cover the whole surface with melted butter, using a pastry brush.
Roll up the dough from the long side, keeping it tight. This will be a little tricky to start, on account of the butter making it slippery.
Brush the outside of the roll with more melted butter.
Grease a 24cm square tin.
Starting from the centre of the roll, slice off 4cm rounds and place them cut-side upwards in the tin. You should get 16 well-shaped slices. The smaller end pieces can be placed in cupcake tins to bake.
Whisk the egg and the milk together to make a glaze and paint the cut surfaces of the buns.
Cover the glazed buns lightly with greased clingfilm and allow to prove for 45minutes or until doubled in size.
Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
Glaze the buns again just before going into the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden. The smaller bun offcuts will only need 20 minutes
As the buns are baking, mix the sugar into the remainder of the glaze, and brush over the cooked buns as they come out of the oven. The heat of the buns will set the glaze and the sugar will make them extra shiny.
Cool in the tin to keep the sides soft. Cover with a clean cloth to cool if you like the tops soft as well.
Enjoy warm.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

i“A Morning’s Walk from London to Kew”, p22, Sir Richard Phillips, J Adlard, London 1817

iiGentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Volume 11, 1839, p466.

iiiThe Village of Palaces (1880) Vol II, p191

iv“By Chelsea Reach: some riverside records” Blunt, R. 1921. London. p55

v“Some Savoury Reminiscences”, The People’s magazine, May 4th, 1867, p331

Barm Hot Cross Buns

19th century, Yeast

This recipe is taken from George Read’s mid-nineteenth century “The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker’s Assistant” (1854). It is a comprehensive handbook of all the recipes a baker might need, covering biscuits both hard and soft, cakes, gingerbread, buns, muffins and crumpets. It is available as a free-to-download PDF here.

Obviously commercial bakers would be dealing in much greater quantities than home-bakers today, so the recipes need to be scaled down. This one I have scaled to 1/35 of the original.

This is a very understated recipe, with just a spoonful of mixed spice and some currants, but the dough, enriched with butter and sugar, benefits from a long overnight rise, and bakes to an ethereally light and tender crumb.

Another difference is the crosses, which, unlike modern recipes, require no second dough – they are cut into the rising buns. Victorian bakers would have a specialised tool called a bun docker, but I find a pizza cutter does the job just fine.

If you’d made curd cheese recently, or have had some milk turn sour, whey makes excellent soft buns. Alternately, use half milk and half water.

Hot Cross Buns

Makes 20 buns, ready by 8.30am(ish) Good Friday Morning. If you haven’t got barm, use regular yeast and adjust the liquid levels accordingly to give 400ml in total.

150ml barm
250ml whey/milk + water – warmed
500g strong white bread flour
80g soft brown sugar – dark or light
100g unsalted butter
0.5tsp salt
5g mixed spice
180g currants

1 large yolk for glazing

2tbs caster sugar
100ml milk

Maundy Thursday Night – 10pm or 1 hour before bed, whichever is earlier.
- Mix 50g of the flour with the barm and the warm whey/milk &water. Set aside to work for 30 minutes.
- Put the currants into a bowl and cover with warm water to plump them.
- Put the rest of the flour into a food processor with the butter, sugar, salt and spice and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- When the barm mixture is showing bubbles, add the flour mixture and combine. Knead by hand for 10 minutes. If you’re using a mixer and a dough hook, set it to the lowest possible speed for 10 minutes, then the highest speed for two minutes. You want the dough to be elastic, but probably a little more moist than regular dough – the long rise time is very drying and if the dough is too stiff to begin with, it will restrict the rise.
- Drain and dry the currants. Add them to the dough and knead them in.
- Turn out the dough and divide into 60g pieces (should be around 20).
- For each piece, fold in the edges to the middle, turn over and roll under a cupped hand to a ball. Arrange on a baking sheet¹ lined with parchment paper in four rows of five.
- Spritz the buns with water. Grease the underside of some cling film by brushing it with oil and stretching it over the tin. The cling film will help keep the air around the buns moist. The buns shouldn’t rise high enough to tough the cling film, but if they do, having it greased will keep the dough from sticking to it, and being pulled out of shape when it is removed.
- Slide the tray of buns into the oven to rise overnight.
Good Friday Morning
- As early as possible, as soon as you get up (6.00am here), cut the crosses into the buns. Use the flat end of a palette knife or a pizza wheel. Dip your implement into some flour and press into the top of the buns twice, at right-angles. No back-and-forth motion is required. The cuts should be in the centre of the buns and not break the edges. Be sure to re-flour your implement before each cut.
- Re-cover with the cling film and allow to finish rising. I left mine for two more hours, making for a total of 9 hours rising. Yours might vary. Decide the time based on how your buns look. If they look ready to bake when you get up, brush them with the egg glaze and use a baker’s lame/razor-blade/sharp knife to lightly cut the crosses (don’t deflate the dough!) and bake immediately.
- Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
- Whisk the egg yolk with 1 tablespoon of water and brush lightly over the buns.
- Bake for 15 minutes, turning the tray around half-way through to help them colour evenly.
- While they are baking, heat the milk and sugar in a small pan until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside to cool.
- After the buns have baked for 15 minutes, brush them over with the milk/sugar mixture and bake for a further five minutes until shiny and golden.
- Remove from the oven, cover with a clean cloth (to keep them soft) and allow to cool in the tin.

¹ The best baking sheet, in my experience, is the shelf that (usually? sometimes?) comes with the oven, with a 4-5cm raised rim all around. This can be helpful to support clingfilm during the overnight rise (the buns are small and won’t rise too high).

Barm Bread

19th century, Yeast

Here is a basic barm bread recipe for you to use with your home-made potato barm.

I am still experimenting with recipes other than loaves of bread, and will hopefully be able to post some other uses in due course, but in the meantime, I present to you a basic recipe, and some suggestions of how you can use it to adapt to what you have to hand. If you have multiple loaf tins, feel free to double or even triple this recipe.

Both breads on this page, and the two white loaves on the previous page, were made according to this recipe. The above image is a cross-section of a loaf made with Stoneground Wholemeal Flour. The image below is from a loaf made with Stoneground Wholemeal Flour and Buckwheat Flour in a 50:50 ratio.

Simple Barm Bread

350g bread flour(s)
150ml room-temperature barm¹
150ml warm water
1tsp salt

Mix 50g of the flour with the barm and the warm water. Set aside to work for 30 minutes. This is not strictly necessary with fresh barm, as it is full of life, but it is good to get into the habit for the future, be it weeks or months later, in order to check whether your barm is still lively. If there are no bubbles visible after 30 minutes, you can try and jump-start it by stirring in 1tsp brown sugar and waiting another 15 minutes.
When bubbles are visible, add the rest of the flour and the salt and mix thoroughly. Knead by hand for 10 minutes. If you’re using a mixer and a dough hook, set it to the lowest possible speed for 10 minutes, then the highest speed for two minutes. You want the dough to be elastic, but probably a little more moist than regular dough – the long rise time is very drying and if the dough is too stiff to begin with, it will restrict the rise.
Grease a large loaf tin well.
Tip out the dough and knead it into a loaf shape. I usually pat it flat(ish), then fold the ends in, then the sides in, then turn it over so the seal is on the bottom.
Lay the dough in your loaf tin. Brush the top of the dough lightly with a little oil or spray with water and/or scatter flour over the surface. This will help keep the dough from drying out.
If you have a plastic bag large enough, you could put your tin inside and ‘inflate’ it around the loaf to keep off any drafts. I usually just put it in the oven.
Set aside to rise. The rising time will depend on the age of the barm, the type of flour used and the temperature of the room.
- I recently made white bread with a fresh batch of barm, and it took 5½ hours to rise during the day (warmer).
- Stoneground wholemeal flour bread with some month-old barm took 10 hours overnight (cooler).
- Enriched (with sugar and butter) dough with fresh barm (for hot cross buns) 9 hours overnight.
When the dough has risen sufficiently,² bake in a hot oven, 200°C, 180°C Fan for 50 minutes, turning the loaf around half way through the baking time to even the colouring.
For an extra crispy crust, remove the loaf from the tin and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes before cooling on a wire rack.

¹ Be sure to shake/whisk your barm up well before taking your measure out.

² This should be when it has doubled in size. For this amount of flour, in a large loaf tin, it will be when the dough almost ¾ fills the tin. The last bit of rise should be in reaction to the heat of the oven (oven spring). Don’t worry if you mis-judge it and let it go a little too long, bake the loaf anyway – it will be delicious, just with a rather flattened top.

Oat Cakes

17th century, 18th century, Yeast

I’m using the recipe for these oatcakes as an example of the pitfalls of projecting 21st century understanding onto 17th century recipes.

Mention the word ‘oatcakes’ and most people will think of small, crisp biscuits that are enjoyed with cheese, pate and the like.

These oatcakes, however, come from an altogether different origin, resembling as they do, what we nowadays would call a muffin. And here is where I have to hold my hand up and make a confession. Back in 2011, in this post, I had a bit of a chuckle at Hannah Glasse’s distracted recipe for Muffins and Oat-cakes, that never mentions oatcakes beyond the title, and her mistake at the end of the method where she writes

Observe, muffins are made the same way.

However, upon reading this and several other early oatcake recipes, it became clear to me that Hannah’s method had actually been describing the making of oat-cakes, which are muffins made with a significant proportion of oat flour. I’d just assumed she was in error because I was thinking of the wrong kind of oatcake, putting the modern notion of a biscuit onto her 18th century recipe.

Oat Cakes recipe, circa 1700, MS7788, Wellcome Library

The manuscript in which I found this recipe dates from around 1700, which makes them of the time of Queen Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs. The spicing and flavouring make them deliciously decadent and aromatic, perfect for an elegant afternoon tea-table. They are best enjoyed warm, with just a little butter. If you’re not eating them fresh from the pan, then the outsides should be lightly toasted under a grill before gently pulling apart and buttering.

These take a little longer than regular muffins in the initial cooking, but my guess is that is down to the oat flour. Speaking of which, I made these by sifting fine oatmeal, which is also sometimes sold as oat flour. It is coarser than wheat flour, being somewhere between brown flour and stoneground wholemeal flour in texture. I firstly sieve out the coarser particles and then whizz these coarse siftings in a blender/spice grinder (the offset blades are more efficient than a food processor) and re-sieve in order to get the maximum amount of ‘flour’. This process is a little tedious, and frankly, you could just use the oat flour as is and they would be fine, but by using only the finest quality of oat flour ensures the delicacy of their texture matches the delicacy of the flavourings.

Oat Cakes

Makes 14

300g plain flour
300g oat flour
20g fresh yeast
150ml whole milk
150ml water
1 large egg
2 large yolks
2tbs sweet sherry/Madeira/Marsala
1/3 nutmeg, grated
1/4 tsp ground mace
1/2tsp salt
20g caster sugar

Put the dry ingredients and the yeast into a bowl. I use my stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.
Whisk the milk, water, egg, yolks and alcohol together then add to the dry ingredients.
Mix thoroughly for 10 minutes.
Mix on high for 2 minutes, then and leave to rise for 1 hour.
Deflate the dough gently then divide it into 75g portions.
Cup your hand over each piece of dough and roll it in small circles, shaping the dough into a smooth ball. Set the ball on a flour-dusted surface to rise. Don’t put the balls of dough too close together, or they might rise into each other.
Allow the dough to rise for 30 minutes from the moment the first ball of dough is shaped. They will take time to cook in batches, so with the staggered batch cooking, the last few will have risen just in time to be cooked.
Put a heavy-based pan onto a large ring on a medium heat. On my 1-9 induction hob, I use 6.
Cook the muffins in batches. Depending on the size of your pan, you can cook 4 or 5 at a time.
To transfer the risen dough to the pan, gently slide a thin spatula underneath and transfer it to the pan turning it upside down as you do so, so that the top of the oat cake cooks first. This will help create the perfect muffin shape. If you cook the base first, the top will continue to rise and curve, and since the radiated heat from the pan will dry the surface of the dough as it cooks, this will thus make it ‘reluctant’ to flatten into the traditional muffin shape. Cooking the soft top first, the weight of the dough pressing down allows it to settle like a gently deflating cushion, into the flattened shape, and a partial hardening of the already flat bottom (which has become the top) is fine.
Cook for 6-7 minutes, then gently turn the cakes over and cook for another 5-6 minutes. When done, they should sound hollow when tapped.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Wholemeal Oat Bread

19th century, Yeast

For a number of years, my favourite brown bread has been the Grant Loaf, partly due to the almost ridiculously easy method of preparation, and partly due to its deliciousness, especially when either freshly baked, or lightly toasted.

However, even the most ardent of fans will admit that it is not a light loaf. It has certain brick-like qualities not limited solely to its shape. So the discovery of this loaf, which not only uses wholemeal flour, but adds oatmeal to it as well, and which results in a light and airy loaf, is a bit of a revelation. You’d think that mixing heavy, stoneground wholemeal with heavy oatmeal would be a recipe for a loaf of leaden qualities, but no – it’s almost as if these two ‘wrongs’ make a ‘right’. Fickle as I am, this is now my new favourite wholemeal loaf.

Like the Grant Loaf, it also takes advantage of the initial vigorousness of the yeast by being proofed only for two short intervals, making it much quicker than traditional bread.

The second difference is the shape in which it is baked. The recipe’s author, Sir Henry Thompson, was most famous for his expertise in the fields of medicine and surgery. However, as a recognised polymath, he was also knowledgeable in a number of other areas, including nutrition, exemplified by his book “Food and Feeding” (1879) in which he noted (on the subject of wholemeal flour)

it does not readily produce light agreeable bread when made in the form of ordinary loaves : a solid mass of this meal being a bad conductor of heat, will have a hard flinty crust if baked sufficiently to cook the interior ; or it will have a soft dough-like interior, if the baking is checked when the crust is properly done. Consequently the form of a flat cake, resembling that of the ordinary tea-cake, is preferable, since it admits of the right amount of heat operating equally throughout the mass.

4th Edition, p40.

The first edition of Sir Henry’s book suggested a mixture of wholemeal flour and fine flour. Later editions changed this to a recommendation of oatmeal – fine if using baking powder and medium if using yeast. I’ve tried both combinations and much refer the yeast version, as the baking powder version seemed to develop a sour taste quite quickly, although that might have been due to me using Sir Henry’s own version of baking powder which reversed the proportions we use nowadays, i.e. 1 part cream of tartar to 2 parts bicarbonate of soda.

This recipe can be baked in two Victoria Sandwich tins and produces deliciously airy bread, ideal for sandwiches. You can cut slices across the loaf, as in the photo, or cut it into quarters for a simpler, but less elegant, wedge.

You can make this bread with ordinary wholemeal flour, but bread flour gives the better result. If you’d like to try the baking powder version, the quantity recommended for this recipe is 15g.

You can download a free copy of Sir Henry’s book, “Food and Feeding” (4th edition) here.

Wholemeal Oat Bread

450g stoneground wholemeal bread flour
115g medium oatmeal
20g fresh yeast or 1 sachet fast action yeast
5g salt
30g unsalted butter
400ml-ish half milk, half water, warmed

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and knead together for 10 minutes on slow using a dough hook, or by hand.
If using a dough hook, at the end of the 10 minutes, switch the speed to High for 2 minutes to bring the dough into a ball.
Allow to rise for 20 minutes.
Divide the dough in half, and mould each piece into a ball.
Press the dough into two greased, Victoria sandwich tins (20cm diameter).
Set to rise for another 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 220°C, 200°C Fan. Depending on how quickly your oven heats, you might want to do this as you set the bread for its second rise, or after it has been rising 10 minutes.
Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down by 20 degrees and bake for a further 15 minutes.
To crisp up the bottom crust, tip the bread out of the tins and return the loaves to the oven to bake for a final 5 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack.

Welsh Cakes

18th century, Biscuits, Cakes, Yeast

I’ve always had a fondness for Wales. The first family holidays were amongst its lush and rolling hills and I became an avid fan of rugby through watching Wales during the glorious days of the mid-1970s.

In terms of its food, I’m constantly frustrated by the existence of so few old books from which to draw recipes. I have on my bookshelves just three in the Welsh language, all dating from the 19th century, and, disappointingly, not one of them contains recipes for either Bara Brith or Welsh Cakes. I have a feeling that there must be a very rich hoard of manuscript recipes lurking somewhere in storage, perhaps in a record office or some archive, just waiting to be discovered.

I have already brought you a couple of Bara Brith recipes, being unable to choose between the rich fruitiness of one and the delicate texture of the other. For years I have been in search of an authentic and worthy Welsh Cake recipe, with no joy. With the best will in the world, the modern Welsh Cake can be a little on the heavy side. The more tactful descriptions suggest ‘close-textured’, other spade-a-spade critiques might go with ‘stodgy’. And the stodginess would seem to be almost necessary, as too long on the griddle and the pastry-like dough of the modern Welsh cake recipe is prone to drying out and becoming tough.

I have therefore been more than a little mollified by this week’s recipe, which I found in the digitised manuscript collection of the Welcome Library. It comes from the recipe book of Dorothea Repps (nee Fountaine) and dated 1703, when she was just 21 and already married to John Repps. I am extremely fond of this manuscript book, for Dorothea’s handwriting is bold, confident and easy to read, and adorned with swooping flourishes. This recipe for Welsh Cakes appears very early on in the book and consequently I feel confident that she must have recorded it no later than 1710.

What I find curious, quite apart from it pre-dating most other Welsh Cake recipes by at least 150 years, is the fact that Dorothea spent her life in Norfolk, just about as far east and distant from Wales as you can get without falling in the sea. There’s nothing else in her book that is particularly Welsh, so its presence is something of an enigma. Also curious is the form that Dorothea’s Welsh Cakes take: a single, large, layered yeast cake sprinkled with currants and sandwiched with raisins.

Welsh Cakes Recipe — From MS 7788, Wellcome Library Collection

As with many recipes of this age, the quantities of ingredients are huge, and reflect the catering-size amounts required in a large house. I scaled them down to something more manageable and baked it as described and I have to be honest, it was a bit heavy. Nice, but decidedly door-stop. So I had another go, making even smaller, single-serving versions, with just two layers of the currant dough sandwiching the plump raisins. They were very neat, and baked to a lovely golden brown, but…..ordinary. Despite the richness of the mix, the oven heat, even without fan convection, made the outsides of a crustiness that all the post-baking basting with milk failed to soften.

Having concentrated so much on the presentation, after carefully cutting and shaping these little filled cakes, I found myself left with quite a lot of trimmings. I can’t abide waste, so I decided to gather them together, re-roll and cut them like modern Welsh Cakes. Since the oven was in use baking the sandwich version, I thought I might cook these in a dry pan on the stove top. And this spur of the moment decision provided the secret to revealing the deliciousness of this recipe. For cooked in the traditional bakestone manner, they are extraordinary.

The thin crust that forms from contact with the warm pan (for a gentle heat is all they require) surrounds a yeast-raised interior so delicate and feather-light they almost disappear. They are at their best hot from the pan, sprinkled with a little caster sugar.

This combination of a centuries-old recipe, with a relatively modern form and method of cooking produces a real tea-time delicacy. Wherever she gathered this delightful recipe from, I’m grateful to Dorothea Repps for recording it in her book so that we can enjoy them today. If you’re in Norfolk, you can stop by and thank her yourself: she is buried in the place where she lived until the ripe old age of 78 and lies surrounded by her family, in a vault in the magnificent church of St Peter and St Paul, in Salle.

Dorothea Repps’ Welsh Cakes

You can, of course, use your own favourite spicing/flavourings for these Welsh cakes, instead of Dorothea’s suggestion of nutmeg. I suggest no more than a total of 1 teaspoon of whatever spices you choose.

Makes 16-20

225g plain flour
pinch of salt
½-1tsp freshly grated nutmeg
15g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter
1 large egg yolk
50-100ml milk
10g fresh yeast
40-60g currants

caster sugar for sprinkling

Mix the flour, icing sugar, salt and spices in a bowl.
Whisk 50ml of milk and the yeast together, then add the yolk and stir thoroughly.
Melt the butter and allow to cool a little before whisking in the milk/yeast mixture.
Add these wet ingredients to the dry and knead until the mixture comes together in a soft dough. Add more milk if necessary.
Knead for 10 minutes until smooth.
Knead in 40g of the currants. If it looks a little sparse to your tastes, add more until the desired level of fruitiness is achieved. Oooh, Matron!
Cover and set aside to rise until the dough has doubled in size. Due to the richness of the mixture, this may take between 1.5-2 hours.
When risen, tip the dough out and pat gently to deflate. Use a rolling-pin to roll the dough out to a thickness of 1.5cm.
Use a fluted, 5cm cutter to cut out little cakes, making sure each one contains a sprinkling of fruit. Re-roll trimmings until all dough has been used.
Cover lightly with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 30-45 minutes.
When ready to cook, gently heat a thick-bottomed, heavy pan on your stove. My induction hob goes from 0-9, and I cook these on 5. I also place the cakes around the edge of the pan, avoiding the concentrated heat of the middle. The dough is rich with butter, so no further oil is required.
Bake the cakes until lightly browned on each side and the centre is cooked through: around 7 minutes for the first side, and 6 minutes on the second. Turn them gently, as the uncooked tops will have risen due to the heat and will be extremely light and easily deflated.
Remove the cooked cakes from the pan and sprinkle the tops lightly with caster sugar.
Serve warm, or allow to cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight box. Warm gently before serving

Sally Lunn

18th century, Yeast

The Sally Lunn is a traditional, enriched tea bread that hails from the West Country city of Bath. It is a completely separate item to a Bath Bun, which is an enriched dough, traditionally filled with fruit and peel, topped with a smattering of sugar nibs.

The Sally Lunn has been likened to a British brioche, rich with dairy and eggs, but not sweet. The traditional shape is round and tall, allowing it to be easily sliced horizontally, usually into three, before being loaded with lashings of butter or, as asserted by Dorothy Hartley in her 1954 book Food In England, cream. More descriptively, she actually wrote:

“This yellow-white bun was an infernal trouble to make, taking from sunrise to sunset to raise, was made gold on top with the beaten yolks of eggs, and split hot and embosomed in clouds of cream”.

I don’t know which recipe Ms Hartley was referring to, but the ones I have read seem straightforward enough. As with all yeast-raised goods, this requires only sufficient time to rise, which involves practically no input from the maker whatsoever.

The first mention of the Sally Lunn bun has for years been accepted as 1780 when, in his publication “The Valetudinarians Bath Guide”, Mr Philip Thicknesse wrote:

I had the misfortune to lose a beloved brother in the prime of life, who dropt down dead as he was playing on the fiddle at Sir Robert Throgmorton’s after drinking a large quantity of Bath Waters, and eating a hearty breakfast of spungy hot rolls, or Sally Luns.

making them arguably the first buns so good they were simply to die for.

Moving on from this grisly-yet-detatched account, I’m going to rock the Sally Lunn world with some newly discovered snippets of information that pushes their provenance back even earlier in the eighteenth century.

Firstly a song, published in 1778 in The Gentleman’s Magazine” the opening lines of which read:

A general Invitation to Sally Lund at Spring Garden

Ye Beaux and ye Belles, who resort to the Wells,
Come to Bath, your loose guineas to fund;
One and all I invite, free from envy or spite,
To feast upon sweet Sally Lund.

Spring Gardens were the pleasure gardens set out across the River Avon, east of Bath, which held public breakfasts twice a week, with musical accompaniment, at sixpence a head.

Just to, if not rain, then certainly drizzle a little, on Bath’s bun parade claim to fame, in 1776, a (long and, to be honest, rather dreary) poem published in The Westminster Magazine contained the lines:

Where Donnybrook surveys her winding rills,
And Chapelizod rears her sunny hills
Thy sumptuous board the little loves prepare,
And Sally Lun and Saffron cake are there.

placing these teatime treats surprisingly, but very firmly, in the Dublin countryside.

And finally, we have a recipe. The only recipe I’ve been able to find that actually dates from the eighteenth century. A recipe which predates all other mentions by several years and comes, not from elegant, regency Bath, but from Newcastle in the north-east of England. Discovered in a book published in 1772 by Mary Smith, it admittedly doesn’t have the exact same name, but it is recognisably similar. In addition, the recipe itself does indeed make a bun that fits the description of a Sally Lunn, right down to the traditional serving suggestion.

As well as the early date and surprising location of this recipe, there are two further interesting details: the single rise and the bakeware. When a dough is enriched with dairy and eggs, it lengthens the amount of time required for the yeast to do its work. This explains why, in old recipes, the dough is first set to rise, and only afterwards are the enriching ingredients kneaded in, just before the dough is shaped. Enriching dough can be something of a double-edged sword, because yes, the result is very delicious, but also, without the correct proportion of liquid, or time, it can turn out heavy. The single rise here means that the initial, exuberant frothiness of the yeast is tempered with the rich ingredients, ultimately producing the perfect balance of both richness and lightness.

The second detail was the recommendation for an earthenware pot to bake it in. It makes sense – a metal tin would get very hot in the brick oven and the enriched dough would run the risk being scorched. Early test batches of this recipe were baked in some red, 10cm, tapas dishes like this. However, on a visit to a French market I found some ceramic mustard jars (shown in the top image) and they proved the perfect shape to allow the dough to really soar whilst still remaining protected from the heat of the oven.

Mary Smith’s (Sally) Luns Cake

1772

450g plain flour
20g fresh yeast
60g unsalted butter
300ml milk, plus more to mix (maybe)
2 large eggs

Put the flour into a bowl and crumble in the yeast.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat, then remove from the heat and add in the milk. Swirl to mix.
Whisk the eggs, add about 2/3 of them to the milk mixture, then pour the liquids into the flour.
Mix to a soft dough, adding more liquid if required.
Knead for 10 minutes.
Divide the dough evenly between your baking dishes (or tins if you haven’t anything else). The mustard pots took 150g of dough, the tapas dishes about half of that. Shape into round, smooth balls and place in the greased dishes/tins to rise for about an hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan.
Use the remaining egg to gently brush the tops of the risen buns lightly. Make sure the egg doesn’t drip down the sides as it will cause the dough to stick.
Bake for 30-50 minutes, depending on the size of your buns, until well risen and golden brown on top.
Remove from the dishes promptly and allow to cool on a wire rack.
Store the cooled buns in an airtight box and warm gently in the oven before serving.