World Bread Day 2010 - Chelsea buns with fennel and apricot

Zorra of 1 umruhen bitte is once again hosting World Bread Day. All you have to do is bake any kind of bread and post about it on Saturday, October 16, 2010. Easy!

I had been eyeing up Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chelsea Buns with Fennel and Apricot for a while. I love dried apricots, and the combination of fennel and apricot seemed intriguing. The recipe from The Guardian is here.

To be honest, I wasn't overly enamoured of the fennel and apricot combination. I found the aniseed flavour to be a little overwhelming - maybe because I used ground fennel instead of fennel seeds?

If I made these again, I would change the method as follows:

• I would use less fennel (as I was using ground fennel);
• I would activate the yeast separately before putting it into the dough mixture - I found the rising of the dough to be rather lacklustre;
• I would use an eggwash to brown the dough on top, because I ended up with slightly overbrown bottoms and pale tops on my buns;
• I would probably ice the buns with water icing as opposed to using the milk glaze, which didn't add a lot, in my view.

Thanks to Zorra for being our host for World Bread Day once again, and you will be able to check out the roundup of breads from all over the world shortly on her site.