The truth about the hot cross buns you buy at the supermarket
For many Australians Easter wouldn’t be Easter without a plate of fresh hot cross buns to dig into, but a stunning report in The Daily Telegraph about the methods major supermarkets like Coles, Woolies and Aldi use to source these products might be enough to turn some devotees off the popular baked treats this year.
The Daily Telegraph reports that while most buns at Coles and Woolies are made onsite, an increasing number of buns are being brought in frozen from a supplier.
Some buns contain ingredients like palm oil which health experts have warned shoppers to avoid, and many are also not made from 100 per cent Australian ingredients.
So how do the major supermarkets do it? And should you be concerned?
Coles and Woolies
Easter is big business for Australia’s two major supermarkets, with Coles and Woolies set to sell more than 70 million buns each when all is said and done.
The Daily Telegraph reports at Coles, around 20 per cent of the hot cross buns are par baked, which is a process where the dough is partially baked before being frozen for storage. Once delivered they’re baked in an oven then placed on shelves.
A Coles spokeswoman told News Corp Australia: “Wherever possible and in the majority of our stores, we prepare and bake our buns fresh but in some supermarkets we simply do not have room for a full bakery,” she said.
“In these stores we bring in the hot cross bun mixture frozen and our teams finish the baking process in our ovens.”
A similar process happens at Woolies, where around 80 per cent of the hot cross buns are baked fresh in store, while the remainder are delivered par baked.
“We have more than 630 in store bakeries across the country, where our expert bakers are busy freshly baking hot cross buns for our customers as demand hits its peak in the lead up to the Easter long weekend,” a Woolworths spokseperson said.
And the rest?
Aldi, which doesn’t have the luxury of bakeries onsite, stocks buns which are frozen before shoppers buy them, and expects to sell close to 15 million this year.
An ALDI spokeswoman told the Daily Telegraph: “Once made, our hot cross buns are frozen within two hours of being baked to ensure they are as fresh as possible when they arrive in store.
“From here, the product is thawed in store before hitting supermarket shelves. For customers wanting to freeze their hot cross buns at home, there is no risk posed to the quality of the product if they are frozen well before the use-by date.”
IGA has a similar process, where hot cross buns are sourced from suppliers.
“Some of these suppliers offer fully baked hot cross buns, others offer the ingredients for in-store baking,” a spokesperson said.
“Likewise, some stores buy frozen hot cross buns while others source them fresh daily. IGA stores are also able to source the ingredients locally or may buy fresh from a local bakery.”
Is this a problem?
The par baking process has drawn the ire of a number of shoppers this year, with some posting to the Facebook pages of major supermarkets when they found out that they were unable to pick up fresh hot cross buns from Coles and Woolies.
One shopper wrote: “Sad to find out today that Coles branded Hot CrossBuns are actually frozen and not fresh baked. Shame on you Coles!” Another posted: “I was very disappointed to see that all the Hot Cross Buns at Rhodes today were frozen! What is the reasoning behind this? Surely they should be clearly labelled also. As for me, I’ll be buying them elsewhere as I prefer fresh to frozen”
Another wrote: “Hot cross buns are not fresh......they always come in frozen! I visited Goolwa Woolworths this morning to see a big display of hot cross buns.....they were frozen! On complaining that it didn’t say on the packet I was told by store manage(r) they are always frozen but have taken longer to thaw today. How old are they? This is false advertising ... shame on you Woolworths.”
In the end of the day there are probably bigger problems in the world than the availability of hot cross buns, but it is a reminder that you have be pay attention when you’re shopping otherwise you might not be getting what you thought.
What are your thoughts?