Making hot cross buns is kind of tedious and easy to muck up. This Hot Uncrossed Focaccia is much more forgiving, because there's no faffing with shaping buns or making a crusty cross that tastes floury or falls off.
I use a set of scales for my bread making as the accuracy helps guarantee great results.
Fiona Hugues' Hot Uncrossed Focaccia Photo: Fiona Hugues
250g currants
250g sultanas
1 cup sherry, port, whiskey, prune juice
20g flaky sea salt
10g fast-acting dried yeast
20g ground cinnamon
10g ground ginger
10g ground allspice
30g runny honey
800g tepid water
30g extra virgin olive oil, plus plenty extra to serve
1 kg high-grade or Baker’s flour
Raw sugar for sprinkling
Maple syrup, mascarpone, creme fraiche and/or vanilla custard, to serve
The day before you want to eat the focaccia: put currants and raisins in a bowl and pour over your choice of sherry, port, whisky, prune juice or a combination. If you have a microwave, nuke the fruit and liquid for 2 minutes, then cover and set aside for the night.
Chuck a big bowl on the scales, measure out the salt, yeast and spices. Add the honey, oil and water and whisk until combined.
Throw in the flour and get stuck in with your hands, mixing until the whole lot is incorporated in the greige sloppy lump. Cover with a tea towel and set aside for 10-15mins.
Next do five minutes of ‘stretch and fold’ inside the bowl. For those that haven’t made it to one of my sourdough classes this is pretty much the action of lifting up one side of the dough with wet hands and pulling it over to the other side. Repeat this action, rotating the bowl as around as you go so eventually the gluten develops and the dough becomes stringy and tight. Once it becomes ball-like and difficult to stretch out, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight.
The next day: a couple of hours before you want to bake, drain the liquid from the fruit. Tip the fruit into the dough and use the stretch and fold technique to ensure it is fully incorporated. Set aside for 30 minutes.
Grease a 28 x 38cm roasting tray with a slick coat of olive oil. Flop in the dough and stretch it out a bit. Leave it aside for another hour, during that time it will relax and fill the tray.
Heat the oven to 200C fan bake. Poke your fingers in satisfyingly but gently all around into the dough to touch the base, try not to pop the air bubbles. This makes luscious divots to catch sugary oil. Then drizzle over a decent amount of olive oil and sprinkle over a generous shower of raw sugar.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until evenly browned. Remove from the oven and drizzle with a little more oil while still warm if you like.
Let the focaccia cool, then serve. I like to serve it with a mix of mascarpone, whipped cream, vanilla custard (whatever takes your fancy creamy goodness with a slop of maple syrup for good measure.
Fiona Hugues is a designer, food writer, stylist and photographer.
