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"Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body, using outside sources of energy. Also, since cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture."

Michael Pollan

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Entries in mixed peel (1)

Friday
Mar302018

Hot Cross Buns

DateFriday, March 30, 2018 at 5:24PM


Hot Cross Buns are probably my favourite festive food. The smell of the cinnamon toasting and the taste of them – lightly toasted, thickly buttered – makes me feel all warm and cosy. They are one of my ultimate comfort foods.

I agree with Oliver Thring that “Buns are some of the best things to have emerged from English kitchens”. He gives a potted history of the hot crossed bun. I was interested to discover that the symbology is not Christian in origin – pagans also baked buns and breads marked with a cross. For example, in ancient Greece, breads marked with a cross signified the start of spring; in ancient Egypt, similar delicacies were offered to the goddess of the moon and the Saxons “baked breads slashed with crosses to honour Eostre, their goddess of spring and fertility and the source of our word Easter. The four sections symbolised the four quarters of the moon, or the seasons”.

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