Easy Bath Buns for Weekend Breakfast

What Makes a Bath Bun a Bath Bun

A proper Bath bun is a soft, sweet, gently spiced yeast bun, dotted with currants and candied peel, with a domed top scattered with crushed sugar lumps. That sugar is the signature: it does not melt away into a glaze but stays in little shards that crackle under the tooth. They have been baked and sold warm in Bath and across the West Country for centuries, and they sit happily somewhere between a teacake and a brioche — rich, tender and just sweet enough.

They are not a Chelsea bun, which is coiled and sticky with syrup, and they are not a hot cross bun, which is lighter on the butter and marked with a cross. A Bath bun is round, generous and best eaten within an hour or two of leaving the oven, split and buttered, with a pot of strong tea alongside. If you can manage a weekend breakfast where the buns come out of the oven while the kettle is still boiling, you have understood the point of them entirely.

What You Will Need

This makes twelve good-sized buns, which is about right for a hungry household and a few neighbours. Everything is measured in grams, so a set of scales is more useful here than a cup measure.

• 500g strong white bread flour, plus a little extra for dusting
• 7g fast-action dried yeast — one sachet
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 50g caster sugar
• 1 tsp mixed spice, plus a good grating of nutmeg
• 250ml whole milk, warmed to blood temperature
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 75g unsalted butter, very soft
• 100g currants or sultanas
• 50g mixed candied peel, chopped small
• For the top: one beaten egg, and 8 to 10 sugar lumps bashed into rough pieces in a sturdy bag

Whole milk matters more than you might think. A richer dough gives a softer crumb, and semi-skimmed will leave the buns a touch dry by the second day — though with buns this good, there rarely is a second day.

Mixing the Dough and the First Prove

• Warm the milk until it feels neither hot nor cold on the inside of your wrist — roughly 37°C. Milk that is too hot will kill the yeast and you will be left with a sweet brick.
• Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl: flour, yeast, salt, sugar and spices. Stir them together so the yeast is evenly distributed rather than sitting in one salty patch.
• Add the milk and eggs and bring everything together with a wooden spoon or your hand until you have a shaggy, slightly sticky dough.
• Knead for 8 to 10 minutes by hand, or 6 to 8 minutes in a stand mixer with the dough hook. The dough is ready when it is smooth, elastic and springs back when gently pressed.
• Work in the butter a spoonful at a time. The dough will look greasy and slack at first; keep kneading and it will come back together into something glossy and soft.
• Knead in the fruit at the very end, just for a minute, so the currants and peel are evenly spread without being crushed.
• Cover and prove in a warm, draught-free spot for 1 to 1½ hours, until roughly doubled in size. A cool kitchen simply means a longer wait, not a failed bun.

Shaping, Sugaring and Baking

• Knock back the dough with a gentle punch, then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.
• Divide into twelve pieces, about 90g each. Roll each one into a tight ball, cupping your hand over it and turning it against the worktop.
• Space them out on two trays lined with baking parchment, leaving room to rise. Press each ball down very slightly with the flat of your hand.
• Prove again for 45 to 60 minutes, until they are puffy and look as though they have almost outgrown the tray. Heat the oven to 200°C fan, 220°C conventional, or gas mark 7 while they sit.
• Brush with beaten egg using a light hand — a heavy brush will knock the air out of all your careful proving.
• Scatter the crushed sugar generously over the tops. Do not be timid; the sugar is the whole point.
• Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until deep gold and risen. If you are baking both trays at once, swap them top to bottom halfway through.
• Cool for five minutes on the tray before moving them. The sugar on top is molten straight from the oven and will take the skin off your fingers without a moment's hesitation.

Eating Them Warm, and Making Them Ahead

Split a warm Bath bun, butter it while the crumb is still steaming, and eat it standing up in the kitchen. That is the correct method. For a slightly grander weekend breakfast, warm them briefly and serve with good salted butter and a little marmalade on the side, or split them, toast the cut sides in a hot pan and treat them like a cross between a bun and a doughnut.

If you want buns fresh from the oven on a Sunday morning without an early start, shape them on Saturday evening, put the trays in the fridge covered with oiled clingfilm, and let them prove slowly overnight. Bring them out in the morning, give them 30 to 40 minutes at room temperature while the oven heats, then egg-wash, sugar and bake as above. The overnight version often tastes better, with a deeper flavour from the slow rise.

Baked buns keep for a day in an airtight tin, and revive beautifully for 8 to 10 seconds in a microwave, or split and toasted under the grill. They also freeze well once cool: wrap them tightly, freeze for up to a month, and warm them through in a low oven. The sugar topping softens a little on freezing, so scatter a few extra crushed lumps over the top before you warm them, and nobody will ever know they were not made that morning.