Sally Lunn Bun

The Sally Lunn bun is a large, enriched teacake indelibly associated with the city of Bath, where Sally Lunn's eating house occupies what is often called the oldest house in the city, a building on North Parade Passage dating to the late medieval period, parts to the 15th century, on Roman and Norman foundations. A well-known legend holds that a Huguenot refugee named Solange Luyon, anglicised to Sally Lunn, brought the recipe from France around 1680, and the bun is essentially a French brioche adapted to an English kitchen: a soft, buttery, slightly sweet dough of milk, eggs and butter, risen long and slowly, baked as a single large round that rises tall and is served split horizontally into thick slices. There is, however, no documentary evidence for Solange Luyon, and the story appears to have been popularised only in the 20th century, with the tea room itself dating from the 1930s. The bun is first reliably recorded in Bath around 1780, in Philip Thicknesse's guide to taking the waters, and became fashionable with the spa visitors of the era. Alternative theories derive the name from the French solileme, or from soleil et lune, sun and moon, for its golden top and pale crumb. Whatever its true origin, the bun is real and much loved, served with butter, sweet with jam, or savoury with toppings.

A tall, golden, very soft round, the crumb yellow and slightly sweet with butter and egg, with a thin crisp crust. Eaten in thick warm slices split open and loaded with butter, sweet or savoury.

The Sally Lunn is structurally a brioche, an enriched dough whose softness comes from butter, egg and milk rather than added fat alone. The dough is wet and soft, requiring a long, slow first prove of two hours to develop flavour and structure, then a shorter second prove after shaping. It is baked as a single large round in a deep tin or, classically, in a Sally Lunn dish, which gives the characteristic tall, domed shape with a soft interior and a thin, crisp, golden crust. The enriched ingredients mean the crumb tears in long, soft strands rather than crumbling. A hot oven, around 200 degrees C then reduced, sets the crust fast and browns it before the interior dries. The bun is at its best warm, fresh and split, since the soft crumb stales within hours.