Easter at Bread Ahead

Last Updated on March 27, 2026

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons; what it takes to bring Bread Ahead’s famous Hot Cross Buns to market.

These magic morsels have been enjoyed on British and Commonwealth tables for over half a century, and their popularity shows no signs of waning. Bread Ahead, who are difficult to miss in Borough Market with their long trailing line of eager tourists and locals waiting to collect their daily bread, have been baking hot cross buns since the start. We got to see inside the bakery where the magic happens.

Matthew Jones, who founded Bread Ahead in 2013 after escaping the fine-dining world, introduced us to the busy, spotlessly clean bakery, with the help of his army of bakers measuring, piping and caremilising in the background. Since they started the company now have multiple locations in the UK and have expanded internationally, not just with their bakeries but also their baking schools, offering short and full-day courses on a range of bakes from across the world.

Every recipe at Bread Ahead is developed by proportion; if you have any experience making sourdough its a similar idea. Instead of flour being 100%, every ingredient is a percentage of 100%, ensuring that large batches can be measured and mixed with ease.

Bread Ahead’s ethos, Matthew suggests, is carried over from the top-level restaurants he used to work at, straightforward recipes and a limited menu, making sure every bake is solid and repeatable instead of a gimmicky flash in the pan. Of course, half of their daily sales, he told us, were in selling their own invention, the creme brulee doughnut, so the team are clearly not afraid of a little bit of innovation.

Hot cross buns, along with minced pies, are the two seasonal bakes that are most popular, and for Bread Ahead, they mark the start of the baking year when they start to sell on Shrove Tuesday. Bread Ahead sells their hot cross buns only during Lent, ending on Good Friday, so if you’ve given up enriched breakfast rolls for the season, you’re bang out of luck.

Matthew talks us through the recipe, mixing wheat flour, salt, sugar, fresh yeast, nutmeg and cinnamon with milk powder (the only processed ingredient) in a truly enormous mixer. After 15 minutes, dried red and Corinth grapes or raisins and currants are added. Much more than in the supermarket’s recipes, resulting in a dough that is more than speckled with these juicy dried fruits, and more becomes a vehicle for their delivery.

The ratios they are making today will result in a batch of 600 buns, which will sell out quick. After kneeding we have a go at shaping the wet dough before letting it relax. Then these balls are shaped in a fascinating machine from Germany that speeds up the process immensely. It cuts each batch of dough and shapes it into 30 rounds, gently rotating each bun on its own perspex seat before a first proof.

Then comes the really exciting bit, crossing the buns. A slorpy 110% hydration dough is slid into piping bags, which we then try to slide across the buns to create the signature crosses. This is easier said than done, and much like pizza dough, the buns can smell fear. A quick assured action is best, although mine end up more graffiti-ed than crossed.

A bake in the oven for 24 minutes, and they’re nearly ready to enjoy. First, they must be topped with a combination of lemon juice and icing sugar, which gives the buns their mouth-watering shine. Once that’s done, Matthew arrives with a suitcase-sized slab of butter and an appropriately large knife to go with it, he wodges out a shard into each one and we tuck into our vernal creations.

Before Good Friday, bakeries across the country will be selling their hot cross buns in droves. Bread Ahead Borough goes through a tonne each of butter and flour each week. They offer a 3-hour baking workshop at £110 and a 90-minute workshop at £45.