One morning Graham and I were talking as we kneaded bread dough together. It was always companionable working side by side at the long kitchen counter, Mac had installed speakers in the kitchen and we would knead rhythmically in time to music as we chatted.
Graham and I had been turning out loaves of whole wheat bread every day, and his prediction that they would sell quickly was an understatement …..quite often they had sold before they were out of the ovens. It was time to expand our repertoire by making more than just bread, and Graham suggested cinnamon buns. He would show me how to make them using the same bread dough and I enthusiastically agreed, I was ready to try something new!
Mac found some big pieces of steel and made two terrific cooking sheets, welding edges onto them so they could be removed with ease from the oven. One was very large, pretty much the entire width of the ovens, the other slightly smaller. They were perfect for cinnamon buns as well as cookies and other baked goods, and I used them for almost forty years.
Armed with money from the sale of the day’s bread I ventured into the harbor and bought some maple syrup (not the good stuff but it would do!), a bag of raisins, a package of margarine and some cinnamon. I was looking forward to trying something different after a week of making just bread.
The next day I went to work even earlier than usual and got the yeast proofing for the bread dough. I had my ingredients for the cinnamon buns lined up and waited impatiently for the lesson to begin. We started by making our usual dough, using half of it for bread and saving the rest for the buns. Graham showed me how to roll the bread dough into a large rectangle, being sure to flour the counter to avoid a sticky mess. He melted some margarine to thin down the maple syrup and brushed it onto the surface of the dough, then sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon and raisins. Together we rolled it up, tucking as we did so to make it tight and tidy. Graham took a knife and sliced the roll evenly, and together we placed the rounds on the two greased sheets Mac had made the day before.
While the buns were rising I took a piece of paper and made a new sign to stick up on the wall beside the one advertising our fresh bread. There were dozens of cinnamon buns on those sheets and I wanted to make sure they sold!
I need not have worried, the aroma of those cinnamon buns wafting over the bay had dinghies arriving ashore in no time. Once Graham and I had removed them from the oven and brushed them with syrup they sold like hot cakes, if you’ll pardon the pun!