Multigrain Hot Cross Buns for Sourdough Surprises

As I sit here typing it's 11:26 pm on the 19th of April. I'm sipping lemon water in between spoonfuls of delicious white bean chicken chili. (All hail the slow cooker!) I am more than a little late working on this month's Sourdough Surprises post.  It's been a stressful week for me. It was already going to be a horrible week and I was bracing for the worst when on Monday morning I noticed that the Wi-Fi adapter for my computer wasn't working. Small issue in the grand scheme of things but when you're already stressed? That mole hill is now a mountain. I stayed calm enough about that. And then on Thursday morning, while editing photos, my hard drive decided it was tired of this life. Yeah. This is most definitely a mountain now.

It's a good thing that I had these hot cross buns to comfort me throughout the week.  I won't discuss the number of calories per bun or the number I ate per day. Let's just call it food therapy and leave it at that.

I made sourdough hot cross buns before (using this recipe) and loved them. For this round, I added some rye and oats so that I could have some whole grains. I also reduced the amount of raisins. Additionally, I added them to my dough early. I knew that the raisins would cut the gluten strands but I just never liked kneading them in later. My crosses always get kinda lost on my buns. I think I need to use a thicker flour paste or I may need to try frosting.

Sourdough Multigrain Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients

Dried Fruit

150g raisins plus liquid for soaking

Starter
340g milk
250g all purpose flour
2 tablespoons starter

Dough
170g all purpose flour
30g rolled oats
50g rye
75g brown sugar
75g melted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
7 g salt

Crosses
Flour paste
White frosting

Glaze
Simple syrup
Jam

Directions
Soak the raisins in water, rum or wine and leave overnight. Combine the starter ingredients and leave overnight (8-12 hours) also.
Add raisins to the starter mixture and mix until distributed. Then add flour, oats, rye, sugar and melted butter. Knead for 2 minutes then allow to rest for 20 minutes. After resting, add salt and spices and knead for an additional 4 minutes. The dough will be sticky.
Leave to bulk ferment for 4 hours, stretching and folding every hour. Place dough in the refrigerator for 8 - 12 hours.
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. My pieces were just under 100g each. Shape and leave to proof for 2 hours or until puffy.
Preheat oven to 400 F. When buns are proofed, pipe on a flour paste (equal parts flour by weight), if using. Bake 20 -25 mins. Remove from oven and brush with sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water, heated until thick) or melted jam. If using frosting instead of flour crosses, pipe crosses after brushing with syrup or jam.




   

    An InLinkz Link-up