My Chocolate chip Hot Cross Buns Experiment

I'm killing two birds with one stone with this bake!

Two birds??? I had two purposes for baking these buns. One is to enjoy freshly baked hot cross buns for coming Easter season. Second is to use this optimized breadmaker bun recipe to investigate the effectiveness of water roux method in bread making without any addition of bread improver.

I've been reading and researching a lot lately about water roux method. I've also spoken to my friend who attended a professional bread making course. He reckons that the water roux method, also known as starch gelatinization, does not essentially produce soft and fluffy breads. "It is the composition of the recipe and the type of flour used that matters..." he said. 

I really need a good evidence to prove either hypothesis and so I'm using this bake to conduct a bread baking experiment.

Here I'm using standard hot cross bun recipe from my Breville breadmaker instructional manual and cook 10% of its bread flour with half amount of water and proceed to make the buns with the cooked dough and the rest of the instructions without adding any bread improver.

*Drum rolling...rapid heart beating...* My exciting result revealed that my friend is right! The water roux method has no effect in improving the bread texture. The buns were soft and tasty when they were freshly baked but were not as good on the next day. I can see the significant difference when I compare them with breads that I've baked with the addition of bread improver.

With this much effort, I'm disappointed to know the truth...*sign* but, I'm not giving up at this moment after reading Lena's comments. Lena, from frozen wings has baked lots of fluffy delicious bread using a good roux water bun recipe. So, my next bread investigation will to bake the buns using her roux water bun recipe without applying water roux method into the recipe and will be curious to see if the recipe composition is the main reason to retain the fluffy bread texture.


Stay tune for my next bread baking investigation...

Here's the Hot Cross Buns recipe from Breville breadmaker instructional manual 
(with my modification in blue).

Make 12 buns

260 ml Water (use 160 ml for Water Roux, add remaining 100 ml into loaf tin)
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tbsp butter
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
450g Bread flour (use 50 ml for Water Roux, add remaining 400g into loaf tin)
2 1/4 tbsp milk powder
3/4 tsp bread improver (I didn't add this for my experimental purpose)
2 tsp Tandaco yeast

Icing sugar glaze
1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons water

Water Roux method:

Mix 50g flour and 160 ml water together until smooth paste. Using low to medium heat, cook the flour mixture until mixture thicken and firm up like a sticky dough.

Place the rest of all ingredients and the water roux dough into the loaf tin in the above order. Use setting 8 (Dough) and press "start".

Sequence for dough setting is:
1st knead 2 min
2nd knead  28 min
1st rise 10 min
Punch Down 10 secs 
2nd rise 50 min
Total time 1hr 30min

Remove the bread dough from the machine and from the tin immediately when cycle is complete. Divide dough and 3/4 cup chocolate chips into 12 portions and incorporate the chocolate chip into each piece of dough and shape them into rounds. Place rounds close together on a lightly greased baking tray. Cover loosely with lightly greased plastic wrap and leave to stand in a warm area for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

Blend together 2 tbsp water and 1/4 cup plain flour until a smooth batter is formed. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a small piping nozzle.

Remove wrap from rolls and pipe a cross onto each bun. Bake in preheated oven at 180°C fan forced for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove buns from baking tray onto a wire rack. If desired, brush icing sugar glaze. Stand 5-10 minutes before serving.

Note: The original recipe from Breville breadmaker instructional manual make 16 buns. The above recipe is the same as the manual but has been reduced proportionally to make 12 buns.


Happy Baking
Please support me and like me at Facebook.