Daily Bread Completes Three-peat At NZ Hot Cross Bun Awards

Auckland’s Daily Bread has become the first bakery to win New Zealand’s best hot cross bun award three years in a row.

The popular Britomart bakery has stuck to its guns from previous years, using essentially the same recipe to add to its two previous victories at Baking New Zealand's hot cross bun competition.

Second place went to Auckland’s Knead on Benson, while Nada Cakes in Wellington won third.

Chief judge Ron Omalvena said Daily Bread’s was the standout hot cross bun in all aspects.

“The bun itself was extremely well constructed. The fruit dispersion was absolutely perfect, and the crosses on the top looked like they’d been done by a machine they were so precise.

It was a great high bun with extremely soft eating qualities.”

Daily Bread head baker Patrick Welzenbach says he used a fairly traditional recipe, with the secret being a long fermentation process and paying close attention to the details.

“We make two doughs; first there’s a sourdough that ferments for more than 16 hours, then we do a second one and rest that for a few hours before mixing them together. It’s a long process but that’s what gives it the standout flavour.”

“We just take care to do everything really well. We do the candied orange peel ourselves, and soak the fruit in pineapple rum from the Bay of Islands for some extra flavour. Our spice mix is our own, and things like that give it a special flavour that you can’t buy.”

The hat-trick of victories comes after a steep learning curve for Welzenbach, who comes from generations of German bakers, but had never encountered hot cross buns before he moved to New Zealand in 2015.

“We don’t have them in Germany. I came across them with a baker in Wellington and from there, I started to get a feel for what a good one should be like. We tried it and gradually improved our recipe over a few years, and now here we are, winning this award three times in a row.

“It was always the goal, and we couldn’t do it without all of our amazing team. I’m super happy.”

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