Hot buns

It looks like most of our breakfast breads are going to involve yeast and proofing and waiting. Eating the result is worth it but sometimes you don't want to stand around at 9am waiting for bread to rise, you know?

I've never eaten a Chelsea Bun before, but it's basically a cinnamon bun with some candied cherries in it. Brown sugar, salt, shortening and milk powder are mixed + one egg + sifted bread & pastry flour. Finally, a yeast & warm water slurry is added on top and everything is mixed for about 6 minutes. The dough is left to rest for 30 minutes.

Instead of baking ours individually, we baked 6 to a pan {the top photo is one of the extra buns that didn't fit into the pan}. Caramel glaze {brown, sugar, sugar, butter, honey, water} is spread onto the bottom of the lined pan and topped with cherries. The dough is rolled out into a large sheet and covered with caramel glaze, cinnamon sugar, pecans and raisins. The sheet is rolled into a log and sliced into buns, which a placed in the pan and proofed until the buns expand enough that the gaps between them are filled. THEN they are baked for 40 minutes at 360 degrees.

Lots of work on these, but when the pans are inverted and all that gooey caramel drips out you forget that you just spent 3 hours on them. Mmmmm...