Hot. Cross. BUNS! !!!!!

I'm so happy.  After the great yeast revelation of last week, I was completely confused.  I thought I heard the one thing on Hottest Home Baker (the husband would argue that I never listen properly. He's right, but because he never remembers anything he'll forget to read this blog and won't come across the admission, so I'm safe), but then reading through all the notes at the start of Baked it says that active dried yeast doesn't need to be added to water before use.  It can be simply added to the flour and mixed through.  I have no idea.  So I followed my nose.  So far, I've clocked 100% failure with dough and each time I've added yeast to flour as a dry ingredient so I decided to try sponging it first (putting it in a little warm water, adding a bit of sugar and leaving it to bubble - activating it) and see where that'd get me (it could hardly go any worse).

It got me hot cross buns!!  Edible hot cross buns!!  (I've also now eaten too many hot cross buns, so the rest are in the freezer.  We'll see how they survive the freeze test when I can bring myself to look at them again)

You have to look at step by step pictures because I am so relieved.  I barely breathed for about 4 hours making these.  The photos also came in handy as I went - I was able to compulsively and weirdly keep comparing the photo taken of the beginning of any given stage against what the dough was doing at any given minute (pretty much every given minute) while I had many anxiety attacks trying to work out it if was actually increasing in size.

This one is just me being all bakery and making my own spice mix.  I can highly recommend pounding cloves into dust as excellent stress relief, if nothing else.  Everything did taste a bit like cloves for a while after though.

Dough, the beginning.

Dough, the rising.

Dough, the buns.

Dough, the buns again after another rise.

Buns!!

More buns !!!