They’re sold out, but here’s how to bake a BUNETTONE

FROM cheddar and black pepper to red velvet, the humble hot cross bun comes in many guises these days. And this year’s must-try reinvention has been flying off the shelves.

Introducing the hot cross bunettone — a cross between the Easter classic and a festive panettone.

It’s ten times the size of a regular bun, serves eight people and will set you back around a tenner. Yet when I tried to source one in store, I was told it had sold out. So I decided to bake one instead.

I enlist the help of Will Torrent, a senior development chef for a top supermarket, who recommends adapting a classic panettone.

‘Just add a few more hot cross bun-type flavours to the mix: plenty of cinnamon, mixed spice and cloves,’ he says.

You’ll need to set aside plenty of time. The best supermarket version of bunettone is lovingly made over 24 hours in a family-run bakery in Piedmont, Italy — and they’re professionals, so we amateurs need at least half that again to get it right.

Top baker Juliet Sear (@julietsear) suggests making an ordinary cake tin ‘extra tall’ by lining it 5cm above the rim with foil and parchment for strength. I give this a go, greasing and lining my deepest cake tin with butter, and start making the dough.

I mix four tablespoons of warm milk with a teaspoon of caster sugar and a 7g sachet of dried yeast. I set this aside to bubble and, in a separate bowl, beat 150g sugar with 250g butter (a whole block — the less said about this, the better) and a dash of vanilla extract. Once creamy, I crack in five eggs and add the zest of one orange and one lemon.

In a third bowl I sieve 550g white bread flour with a pinch of salt and plenty of spices, before making a well in the middle and pouring in the yeast mixture, followed by the egg mixture.

At this point the dough is so sticky I’m sure I’ve done something wrong, but I decide to plough on, rolling up my sleeves and attempting to knead it for ten minutes. There’s gloopy dough everywhere — on my hands and apron, even in my hair — and it takes brute force to peel it off the worktop and wrangle it into an oiled bowl for the first stage of rising.

This is important, says Will, ‘otherwise you’ll get a tight dough that’s dense and sticky in the middle — it needs time to form those lovely bubbles’.

My recipe suggests leaving it in the fridge for 24 hours, which gives the yeast enzymes plenty of time to work and unlock the complex flavours in the wheat.

I come back to it the following evening, give the cold dough another quick knead and mix in 160g raisins (soaked in rum to make them plump) and 100g chopped candied citrus peel.

NEXT it goes into the greased tin, covered loosely with cling film, and is left to rise yet again — this time for up to 12 hours, until it doubles in size.

Finally — and this really has been the longest bake I’ve ever undertaken — it’s time to cook the bunettone. I score a cross on top using a serrated knife, brush on some beaten egg white and sugar, and bake it at 180c/160c fan/gas 4.

Fifty minutes later, it’s done. A golden-domed triumph with a shiny, hollow-sounding crust and fluffy, buttery, fruit-filled sponge inside.

It’s so big — a whopping 20cm across — there’s no way a slice will fit in my toaster, so I plump for putting a chunk under the grill and eating it slightly charred and smeared with butter.

My verdict? It’s certainly not a hot cross bun. There’s none of the satisfying stodginess, and it’s so light it almost melts in my mouth. But those delicious seasonal flavours are there in spades, as well as copious amounts of juicy raisins and sugary fruit. As far as I’m concerned, a bigger bun is a better bun. Just don’t ask me to share it.