Hot cross buns

Read the full method, check the stated equipment and prepare every listed ingredient. Keep dough, filling, wash, topping and handling groups separate. Weigh edible parts as described in the ingredient list.

Mix dough flour, instant yeast, dough sugar, dough salt, dough liquid and dough egg if listed. Knead on the dough hook for about 5 minutes, keeping dough butter separate initially. Add the listed dough mixed spice and cinnamon with the flour.

Add dough butter gradually and knead another 5–8 minutes until smooth and stretchy. Pause if warm or greasy. Add optional extra dough milk only if unusually stiff.

Knead prepared dough fruit and zest in gently just until distributed.

Cover in a lightly greased bowl and leave 1½–2½ hours at 22–26°C until roughly doubled and aerated; a cooler kitchen needs longer.

Divide equally according to yield, enclose exposed fruit and round into smooth buns. Arrange with expansion room in the prepared tin or tray and cover.

Allow 45–90 minutes; the timer is an estimate. Buns should be puffy and slow to spring back. Begin heating the oven near the end of proofing.

Heat the oven to 180°C fan.

Allow about 15 minutes of heating in total and check that the oven has reached 180°C fan.

Continue covered until ready. Buns should be puffy and slow to spring back.

Mix cross flour with enough cross water for a thick pipeable paste. Pipe crosses over the buns. Keep glaze water separate.

Check the oven has reached the stated setting and carefully put in the prepared tray or tin.

Bake at 200°C conventional / 180°C fan for 20–25 minutes until golden and about 92–94°C in the dough.

Take the bake out of the oven and set it on a heatproof surface.

Warm apricot jam with glaze water until fluid.

Brush the hot buns with glaze and move to a rack.

Cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes.