stranger than fiction

i'm back again, so soon, because yesterday's baking session had results so good i could barely contain myself, and also, because it made me think. and what do i do when i think? pour it out all over the internet. woohoo for being fully paid up generation y (i always feel journalists are missing a trick not doing a number with a question mark on that one, by the way).

so, in the second year i lived with my friend tallie, amongst others. she was a fellow literature student who understood my obsession with narrative, and perhaps, even before i did, my obsession with food, seeing as how weekly she'd come over to talk literature and receive/consume baked goods when i lived in halls. so, despite my protests of it 'looking schmaltzy and shit and having will ferrell in', she sat me down in front of stranger than fiction with the promise 'you will enjoy it, also it's got dustin hoffman playing an english professor in it'. i set my jaw and tried to hate it, and managed to for about five minutes before i gave up. it's funny and clever, and sad and sweet, and it's got dustin freaking hoffman playing an english professor (seriously whoever first let me watch the graduate has a lot to answer for). but the main reason i'm even telling you this story is because there's a character in it, ana pascal, played by maggie gyllenhaal, who has this reflective monologue about how during law school she got more satisfaction from providing food for her classmates than doing her assignments, that her cooking improved and her grades depreciated until she made the decision to drop out, and open a community bakery. she felt it was a less complicated and more democratic way to, as she put it, 'make the world a better place'. when i watched this film with tallie she gave me a little kick after this speech ended, and i looked over gravely, ready with a curt 'yes...i know...i know who she sounds like'.

two years on, after having dropped out of one masters in critical theory at the university of sussex and started taking my role in the hospitality industry seriously, two things happened to remind me of my then-annoyance at tallie's well-perceived link. one, being that on my birthday my mum bought me both flowers and flour, reminding me of this scene, and jogging my memory. and the second being a coworker, having sampled various baked things i've tried, including the buns i will tell you about here, turning to me and saying 'if you weren't so good at this i would tell you to go off somewhere and open a bakery'. it was an oddly jarring experience, being reminded of the memory of me two years ago. i remember then being very annoyed that my friends all had fantastic artistic talents and 'all' i did was cook; and i remember feeling tallie's words like a sting, as at that point i wasn't confident in my academic ability, and wanted desperately to be recognized for it. two years on, after the recognition came and i let it go because it didn't seem to matter all that much, i find all i want to do is cook, and serve food and drinks. i find that tallie was right. and i find, most of all, that not only do people recognize it as a talent, but they see it as a kind of warm, effusive talent; a talent that gives. i was never going to get that with lightly-read papers, no matter how groundbreaking.

anyway, onto the food (are we noticing that phrase becoming a sort of verbal tic?). yesterday i decided i wanted to make something sweet but i had a total block as to what and wasn't feeling like putting clothes on and leaving the house, so i perused my books and somewhat bare cupboards until i hit on the perfect solution in my (now thoroughly flour-coated) copy of daniel stevens' the river cottage bread handbook. i decided to combine my adventures with yeast with my desire to bake, and produce a batch of chelsea buns, so here's the recipe along with some process pictures i took along the way:

chelsea buns

550g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
50g caster sugar, or vanilla sugar
5g powdered dried yeast
10g salt
150ml warm milk
225g butter, melted
1 medium free range egg

for the filling:
25g butter, melted
100g caster sugar
200g currants

for the glaze:
50ml milk
50g caster sugar

in a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt, then add the milk, butter, and egg and mix to a sticky dough. turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and silky. return to the cleaned bowl, cover, and leave to rise for about an hour until doubled in size.

brush the base and sides of a deep 30cm square baking tin with a little of the melted butter and coat with a little caster sugar, shaking out the excess.

tip the dough out onto a floured surface, dust with flour, and roll out to a rectangle, about 60x40cm. brush the melted butter all over the dough to the edges, leaving a 2cm margin free across the top (long) edge. sprinkle with the sugar and scatter the currants evenly on top, right to the edges, but leaving the top margin clear.

press the currants into the dough, then, starting from the edge closest to you, roll up the dough to enclose the filling and form a long sausage. moisten the margin at the top with water and press to seal. cut the roll into 9 equal pieces. turn each piece on its end and press with your hand to flatten slightly, until no more than 3cm high. arrage in rows of three in the baking tin. they should just touch each other. like this:


preheat the oven to 200 degrees c/gas mark 6. leave the buns to prove for about half an hour until doubled in size again. sprinkle a little of the sugar for the glaze over them and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

warm the milk and remaining sugar in a pan until dissolved, then brush over the buns to glaze when you take them out of the oven. best served warm.

and the finished product:

just....look...guys. i actually squealed with delight when i took these out of the oven, i was amazed at how they'd turned out. that me of two years ago would never have believed that this kind of thing was within her skill level. my mum's audible gasp and hushed 'can i have one?' when she arrived home from work sealed the deal further, and my belief in having made the right choice on the food/literature balance in my life was further affirmed by my brother's plodding downstairs at midnight for 'just one more....but only if there's enough left for me to take one to work tomorrow.' in the eating, these buns were sticky, doughy, and, for the maker at least, thoroughly satisfying. i am definitely going to pursue this yeasted baking route, am thinking of trying some of the cinnamon buns in nigella lawson's 'how to be a domestic goddess' next. in hindsight, i'm glad tallie was right.