Oh Gale, Gale…

Friday is hot cross bun day, at least as long as it’s Lent, and so I’m after the Gale Gand recipe this morning. The only big disappointment so far is that the recipe wasn’t given in weight measures. I used a standard 5 ounces-to-the-cup conversion, but ended up using at least a third again as much flour since the dough kept mixing down into something that looked like fruit cake batter. It took about 15 minutes to do what should have been a 4-5 minute mixing job. In the process I’m sure I activated a lot more of the gluten in this flour than I needed to. On the day the pastry revolution comes, recipe writers who use volume measures for dry ingredients will be the first to the wall.

Everything else seems good though. The dough is rising but fast. With this much yeast I don’t wonder why. In another half hour I’ll need a whip and a chair!