Lemon marmalade Chelsea buns: GBBO week 3 - Bread week

Bread has never been my favourite thing to bake. I'm just not a patient enough person for all that kneading, and proving and waiting and making sure things are done at just the right time so they don't over-prove and collapse or under prove and remain dense.

Sure, if I had nothing to do but bake bread all day, then I 'get' that it's therapeutic kneading the dough and satisfying to make your own bread, seeing the magic of the yeast doing it's thing. But it generally doesn't fit into my busy life very well.

The only exception being sourdough - which I haven't yet mastered. But I've found it is very forgiving when left for extended periods of time and it fits into my life, rather that the other way round of me having to make my plans around it.

Sourdough didn't really lend itself well to any of this weeks bakes though. Possibly perhaps a sourdough naan bread? But I fancied making Chelsea Buns. Having made them before using my old bread maker, I knew that I could 'cheat' by making the dough in the breadmaker.

I haven't quite got to grips with my new breadmaker though. And when I say 'new' I've actually had it for 2 or 3 years but just haven't used it as much as I used to use my old one.

I tweaked the Chelsea bun recipe to make it my own so that was an added variable that I knew I was experimenting with. Leading me to wonder whether this would be my first baking fail of #GBBOBloggers2018.

But in went the ingredients and 2 hours and 20 minutes later all was looking good. 

The dough had risen brilliantly.

BUT... I'd ended up with a wet dough that was in no fit state to roll out. Because I'd used 50/50 ratio of strong white flour and stoneground wholemeal flour, I'd added extra milk and water and I guess I'd added too much as I was making it up as I went along. So I used loads more flour to help dry it out. 

To decide what flavour I would make my Chelsea Buns, I looked for inspiration in my fridge where I found a delicious lemon marmalade that granny had brought back from Italy. 

So I rolled the dough into a rectangle, brushed with melted butter, mixed together some mixed dried fruit and the lemon marmalade and spread it over the dough. I rolled the dough lengthways and used kitchen string to divide it into 12 pieces.

Into the oven at 35C proving temperature for 20 minutes covered in clingfilm and they grew to look like this.

Then they were baked at 220C for 15-20 minutes.

Then I brushed them with apricot jam mixed with a little hot water.

I was pleased that they tore apart nicely. The lemon flavour worked well but overall they tasted a bit too 'bready'. I think I could have added a lot more fruit - perhaps even soaked fruit to add more moisture. Perhaps drizzling icing on top would help with making them sweeter and more cakey? In all honesty, my sweet tooth is a lot less sweet these days so I actually quite liked them myself but I don't think they'd pass as good Chelsea Buns by anyone elses standards.

Anyhow, here's the ingredients list so I can tweak it next time to improve them:
125g strong white flour (plus loads extra for dusting as it was such a wet dough)
125g stoneground wholemeal flour
1 tsp coconut sugar
30g butter
half a teaspoon salt
1 egg
50ml milk
150ml water (I would try less water next time - perhaps 75ml to 100ml?)
1 sachet yeast (7g)

All of the above ingredients went into the bread maker to make the dough.

Then the next steps were as I've already described above. I started with 100g of the lemon marmalade, 50g of mixed dried fruit, and 15g of melted butter then added a bit more of the lemon marmalade and mixed fruit. With hindsight, I should have added even more for more sweetness and moisture.

I baked it in an 11 X 9 inch tin which was perfect to fit the 12 chelsea buns in.

Linking up with #GBBOBloggers2018 at Mummy Mishaps and Casa Costello: