Some say that the hot cross bun is age old, dating back to Ancient Egyptian pagan history where the little buns were offered in honour of the Egyptian moon goddess. The Pagan Saxons too offered similar buns to their Goddess of Light, Ēostre, the cross signifying the four quarters of the moon, the four seasons, or the elements earth, wind, water, fire. There seems to be a variety of interpretations for the significance of the perpendicular intersecting lines. As with many traditions and customs their can be found similarities in many cultures and along a lengthly time line. Today, the buns have a primarily Catholic connotation. For hundreds of years the hot cross buns have been baked and eaten on Good Friday, the symbolism apparent. For me, regardless of their history, they occupy a glorious little place in my childhood, a near perfect treat that came around only once a year.

This recipe, although appearing involved at first, is quite straightforward and once you’ve made your first batch, subsequent ones will be far easier and come together quickly in between preparation for other dishes.

To bake this recipe I used the rectangular tin in the first photo and can make 15 buns with the quantity of dough in this recipe. Some prefer to lay the buns out as you would cookies, with ample room for each to grow but this does not produce the buns we’ve grown up with in Australia and with too much surface area open to the oven, you get too much crust. Apart from eating, the most satisfying part of the hot cross bun is pulling one away from the others and revealing the freshly baked soft bread.

To the recipe:

Proofing the yeast, the most important step of the bread making process: In a bowl or saucepan add 1.5 cups (375 ml) of milk and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Heat the milk in either the microwave (bowl) or on a stove top (saucepan). I heat the milk to about 40 degrees which is roughly when you can stick your finger in it, it is hot but you do not need to remove your finger. When the milk is warm enough, remove from the heat and add 2 teaspoons (7 grams) of dry yeast. Set the milk mixture aside in a warm spot for about 10 mins, or until the next step is complete. You need to check that the yeast is ‘alive’ and working properly. After 10 minutes there should be a light foam sitting on the surface of the milk. If there is no foam, there could be several problems. Inactive or dead yeast, milk too cold or milk too hot. I understand that scorching hot milk can kill yeast quite efficiently.

In a large bowl, add the following ingredients:

4 cups of flour, 00 flour is best, 45 if you live in France.

1/4 cup of castor sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of saltanas

1/4 cup of currants, Corinthian currants if you can get them.

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

1 teaspoon of ground ginger

2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

20 ground coriander seeds

16 ground cloves

6 ground pimento ( I think that this is often called all-spice)

Note: Using a mortar and pestle, I grind the coriander seeds, cloves and pimento together.

When all of these dry ingredients are in the same bowl, mix with a spoon to evenly blend the ingredients together.

Melt 60 grams of butter. Check that the yeast has activated in the milk mixture you set aside earlier, if so, add the melted butter and one egg. Whisk together.

Make a well in the centre of your dry ingredients and pour in the milk mixture. Stir until combined. Then, using your hands, form the dough and turn on to a floured bench or marble. Knead for 15 mins or so until the dough is smooth and elastic-like. I add extra flour to the outside of the dough as I kneed to prevent it from sticking to my hands too much. It is a sticky dough and I strongly recommend the use of dusting flour while kneading.

Cover with a damp towel and rest for at least an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. It needs a warm place so moving it back to the bowl may be necessary.

Punch the dough down by hitting it with your fist until deflated. Five or so times is enough. Then kneed for 3-5 mins. Divide the dough into equal portions (I make 15) and form each portion into a ball. Line your baking tray with baking paper and place the buns inside. I have the buns just pushing up against each other but not close enough to change the shape of the ball too much. Cover with a damp cloth and set aside for a further 30 mins in a warm location.

Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

In a small bowl, mix 1/2 a cup of flour and about a 1/4 cup of water together. I do this stage standing at the sink so that I can add more water as I go. You want it to flow but not be too liquid. You will use this mixture to mark the cross on the buns. Put it in a freezer or sandwich bag and tie it off. When the 30 min rise-time is complete, snip a small corner off the bag and draw the crosses on the buns. The best way to do this is to draw a continuous line across each row of buns in both directions. Keeping the line in the center of the buns.

Bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees celsius and then turn the oven to 180 degrees celsius and bake for a further 20 mins or until golden brown. The best way to test that the buns are ready is to tap on the bottom. If the bun sounds hollow, its likely to be ready.

Hot cross buns are best eaten fresh, straight out of the oven, served with butter, honey or jam. Those that remain until the next day will seem quite hard but if you heat them up, they soften almost back to what they were like fresh.

Happy baking! If you have any questions please comment and I will answer.

I love these pans… I have the 32 cm and 24 cm and they are quite simply two of my favourite things. Since leaving home, I had like many others around the world I’m sure,  followed ‘commes de mouton’ (like sheep) the advice that ‘non-stick’ was the best choice for a frying pan. I guess people are deterred by the over-exaggerated level of care required to own and use a steel pan but I’ve found that the little bit of extra care and diligence is well worth it. Using a ‘proper’ frying pan and learning how to use it properly has improved my cooking ten fold. In fact I’ve found a new love for cooking now that my attempts result in more successes than failures.

A steel pan requires ‘seasoning’, a process of coating and sealing the steel with oil which creates a natural non-stick surface and protects the pan against oxidation, stopping rust and damage to the cooking surface. To be clear, the oil polymerizes into a thin, solid, plastic-like film over the surface of the porous steel. When the pan is heated, the film remains in-tact and creates the lovely non-stick properties that you so often see on pans in the hands of celebrity chefs. The trick to using a well seasoned pan is ensuring that when ready to cook, you add oil and heat it until very hot, but not smoking, before adding your food.

This is a video showing the making of the De Buyer Mineral B pans and how to season them.

Here is some information about seasoning and cleaning a steal pan:

To begin, clean the new pan, removing waxes or other packing or protective residues on the cooking surface. The De Buyer Mineral B pan is coated with bees wax and to remove this we heat it up; add boiling water, boil for a couple of minutes, empty the water; sponge it with dish washing liquid; wipe out with paper towel. Repeat if necessary.

Seasoning: Cover the bottom of the pan with a couple millimeters of oil and using you fingers run some of the oil around the sides of the pan up to the rim. We use sunflower oil for this but you can use any oil with a high smoke point. Peanut, canola, vegetable, they will all do the job. Heat the oil on high heat until the oil starts to smoke. Remove from heat, pour out excess oil and let it cool. When the pan is completely cool, wipe the pan evenly with paper towel and the seasoning process is complete.

Cleaning: The trick to cleaning is to add very hot water to the very hot pan after cooking, rest it for a few seconds, empty the water and then wipe with paper towel. You can clean the pan with a sponge and small amount of liquid soap but you must be careful not to scrub away the seasoning. Also, it is not a good idea to put your pan in the dishwasher or to leave the pan to soak in a sink. In both instances you will encourage rust and if done repeatedly over a long period of time it will create pits in the steel.

If I am not going to use the pan for two or more days, I give the pan a light coat in oil for storage, this gives it extra protection against rust.

Towards the end of Summer last year I bought some bulbs. The man at the garden store assured me that these bulbs were saffron or safran in French. I planted them and waited so patiently for them to show some growth but October passed and then November passed and I thought for sure that I’d been misinformed. They finally popped up their purple heads about 12 days ago and opened four days ago and as expected the three vibrant saffron threads were missing. Such a shame. I’ve been looming over them for five months, so expectant. This year I am going to try again with bulbs purchased from a French producer and hope that I have better luck.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I treated ourselves to an afternoon off and we spent it at MIAT, The Museum voor Industriële Archeologie en Textiel in Gent. I was busting my side in anticipation. For years I learnt to weave, have my own looms and spent many hours weaving but I had never seen a jacquard loom in real life. I didn’t know for sure that the museum would have one on display but I thought surely they must. I was thrilled to find not one but three jacquard looms and literally floors of exciting weaving machinery and equipment.

The museum is housed in a huge brick building which, from the early 1800′s, housed the former Desmet-Guequier cotton mill. Some of the equipment in the museum belonged to the mill allowing visitors to see some unique equipment that they wouldn’t normally see, unless visiting a working mill of course. The building has huge floor to ceiling windows that let in an extraordinary amount of light and has high ceilings resulting in a beautiful, dynamic space. As visitors move through the building from the top floor to the bottom, the curators want them to feel as though they journey through time. This is done by successfully using huge life-size images to set the scene, time and place. The exhibit begins with early hand operated looms and moves through to steam operated machines and then on to high powered, electricity run mass production machines, some that are meters and meters wide. Not all looms, there are warpers, carders, combers and winders, a brilliant array of equipment to help visitors understand the evolution of woven cloth production.

We spent five hours milling around ooh-ing and ah-ing at every single piece of equipment, each of us constantly calling to the other to get over and look at something else.

Above, a tapestry loom.

Above, a very old, small jaquard loom. Magnificent!

Above, a piston from a steam engine which operates a drive shaft which in turn operates all of the weaving machinery.

Above, the drive shaft runs above all of the machinery and each machine is connected to it by way of a wheel and belt.

Above, along with giant over-sized prints on the walls, the museum uses dummies which give a brilliant sense of time and place. Some of the dummies are quite realistic!

Above and below, a braid loom that can weave multiple braids at once. All with the same pattern but using different coloured warp and weft.

Above, they also run classes and various educational programs alongside the exhibition including a functioning paper printing press workshop that has a vast array of presses in normal working order.

And I leave you with this final message …. be extra careful around industrial equipment! Oh dear …..

We are five days away from the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. As a result the sun doesn’t come up until 9h00 and is down by 17h00, so getting up on Sunday for the Fête de la Dinde in Licques was somewhat of a challenge. But it was worth it.

Every year the town of Licques holds a festival in honour of the turkey. A hundred or so turkeys are paraded along the main street of the village followed by the town dignitaries. I had the camera set on a high ISO in anticipation of a fast and active turkey dash but it ended up being a very slow and stagnant move through the crowd. The turkeys did little more than amble, quite comfortable with all of the attention and un-miffed by the hundreds of people that had come to watch.

The town is famous for its traditionally reared organic turkey and has been celebrating this event since the 17th century. I was moved to find that they have celebrated this event for such a long time. The town continues to show enduring adoration and appreciation for an animal that has provided, I imagine, many local jobs and much financial security for the town.

As part of the festivities there was also a brilliant food producers market. There were wines, cheeses, a variety of milks and icecreams, honey, fresh, cured and conserved meats and of course … fresh turkey.

In the main square there is a stone statue of a turkey showing just how important this bird is to the towns people. Behind it, just for this special day was a gigantic cauldron brewing the town’s famed liqueur ‘Licquoise’. Unfortunately I was completely engaged with ‘chasing’ the ambling turkeys that I missed the drinking of the contents of the cauldron … fortunately there’s always next year!

I love eating flowers. Some months ago that would have seemed quite strange to me but nonetheless, I have become a flower eater. I made this salad to accompany fish a few afternoons ago and thought that I would share it. It has a few handfuls of mache; a few handfuls of rocket; purple basil, as much as you can spare and about the same quantity of nasturtium flowers to basil leaves. Wash and drip dry all of the ingredients, throw them together and drizzle with olive oil. I find when picking the nasturtium flowers that it is best to leave about 10 – 15 cm of the stem left on the flower so that you can put them in a vase of water until you are ready to add them to the salad. I also pinch the stem off as close to the flower as possible when I’m ready to use them. You can eat the entire flower, and they are quite delicious. They have a subtle flavour with a slight velvety texture when they reach your tongue. It’s quick, glorious and real show stopper when it lands on the table.

My sunflowers have finally tipped their heads which signals the end of Summer and the slow decent in to Winter. Seeing that they looked so solemn today in the wind and the rain, I thought I’d post these pics to hold on to their glory for just a tinsy bit longer. Have a great weekend everybody!

Just over our southern departmental border, is the Abbaye et Jardins de Valloires. A couple of weeks ago we went to see the garden but I was secretly there to eat. All of the fruit, vegetable, herb and floral components of the dishes come from the garden and the  daily menu is inextricably linked to the season and what is flourishing in the garden on that day. I was certainly not disappointed, there were so many new flavours and textures for us to try, the use of edible flowers and root vegetables were by far the most exciting.

The garden. Although the abbey dates back to the 12th Century, the garden is a modern creation. It maintains a number of  styles and diverts from ideas normally associated with traditional French gardens. The sculpted and immaculately kept lawns, hedges and topiaries represent a traditional French garden but the floral, vegetable and shrub gardens between the lawn and the Abbey are designed in the style of an English garden, divided into beds with no borders or paths, just well maintained grass. Running the full length of the garden to the left there is a ‘naturalistic’ walkway that is a very wide path that has a massive variety of trees and shrubs, many that flower. As it is elevated above the rest of the garden you get a wonderful view of the entire design as you move along the walkway. There are over 2000 species of plant, 5000 taxa and over 200 varieties of ancient and modern rose.

The Abbaye is the only complete 12th Century cistercian abbey in France. It has had quite a tumultuous history with war and a fire that took out a large section of the building. Today the abbey is home to a group of children who live there permanently as well as a hotel which you wouldn’t know was there by the lack of obvious hospitality finishes and domestic evidence.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable day and I would recommend a visit to anyone nearby. Make sure to visit in the summer months however because the cafe is closed when vegetable production is low and without the flowers in full bloom it would not do it justice.

The inner court of the Abbey.

250 year old espaliered pear tree. The monks used to make liquor with the fruit.

Humans have been producing synthetic Ultramarine for close to two hundred years. It is a process of turning a white brick composing of clay, sodium carbonate and sulphur into the a blue brick of unprocessed pigment then processing this brick into a pure, rich pigment. The final pigment product is used in a phenomenal range of products from cosmetics to plastics, paints, inks and coatings. It gives the blue colour to water bottle lids manufactured all over the world and allows manufacturers to produce the richest, darkest blacks, would you believe that ultramarine is a component of mascara and car interior plastics?.

At the bottom of this post I have embedded a short film I found on YouTube to show you a bit about the process and production of ultramarine at Holliday Pigments.

*UPDATE* I have been asked (very nicely) to remove a number of photos and the link to the short film which I believe were the heart and soul of this post so I apologise for the lack of coherence and a good sense of the Holliday factory. The pictures that depicted the shear beauty of the factory have been removed and unfortunately the effect will have to be left to your imagination. Take an image of any factory situation and then cover every square millimeter in ultramarine pigment dust. Astonishingly beautiful.

Hundreds of changing textures adorn the floor from boots and rubber tyre tread.

A poor photograph but it captured the true richness and depth of the colour perfectly.

The company also manufactures Manganese Violet which is created using a different process to Ultramarine production and I managed to get a couple of photos whilst the technicians were working on its creation. A unique colour indeed!