Bread Machine Makes Quick Work of Hot Cross Buns
Monday, April 2, 2012 at 1:00AM 
By Sandy Hu
Do you have a bread machine gathering dust in your garage? I do. It was given to me when I first joined the Fleischmann’s Yeast brand in the heyday of the electric bread maker.
Shortly after, I wrote and co-produced a bread machine cookbook, working with the company’s skilled home economists, who created a wide variety of recipes that they tested in all makes and models of bread machines in the company’s test kitchens.
I’ve baked bread from scratch for many years so I didn’t really need a bread machine. But I’ve kept that old machine, and every Easter, I dust it off and return it to the kitchen to make hot cross buns.
Why the bread machine? These days, I really don’t have time to mix up dough, knead it, let it rise, shape it, let it rise again and bake. With the bread machine, I dump the ingredients in at once, set it to the dough cycle, then take out the dough, already kneaded and risen. I just shape, let rise for 10 minutes, and bake! How easy is that?