Kitchener bun

What is Kitchener bun?

The Kitchener bun is an Australian pastry popular in South Australia. It is made from sweet, yeasted doughnut dough that is either deep-fried or baked into a golden roll. Once cooked, the bun is sliced open down the center. Inside, bakers pack generous quantities of rich dairy cream alongside sweet fruit jam, typically strawberry or raspberry. The pastry has an exposed opening displaying its pale filling, unlike closed jelly doughnuts. To finish, the bun is usually coated with a fine dusting of granulated sugar over the top crust. It offers a combination of airy bread, soft dairy fat, and tart berry fruit.

Where does Kitchener bun come from?

This sweet bun began as a local take on the Berliner, a traditional filled doughnut brought by German settlers. It went by its German name in South Australia until the outbreak of the First World War. Rising anti-German feeling across the country prompted bakers to rename the pastry in 1915. They chose to honour Horatio Kitchener, a prominent British field marshal. Early printed versions differed from today's pastry. A recorded method from 1930 shows that bakers originally sealed the fruit preserves inside the dough before frying it in fat, and written mentions of fresh cream only started appearing in 1934.

How is Kitchener bun made?

To make this pastry, bakers prepare a sweet yeast-leavened dough akin to typical doughnut mixtures. The portions are shaped into buns and either cooked in hot deep-frying fat or baked in an oven. Once the buns are ready, they are split down the side or across the top to create an open cavity. A spoonful of strawberry or raspberry jam goes inside, followed by a heavy layer of whipped dairy cream that spills outward. Finally, a light coating of sugar is sprinkled over the pastry before it is set out for sale.

What Kitchener bun means

The pastry reflects the home-front politics of wartime Australia. During World War I, widespread patriotic sentiment led to the scrubbing of German names from places and local foods, giving the bun its military namesake. Decades later, during the Second World War, strict wartime austerity governed bakery practices. In 1944, a baker situated on Unley Road in Adelaide was prosecuted and fined over fifteen pounds—equivalent to around a thousand modern dollars—under the National Security Regulations for illicitly adding dairy cream into his Kitchener buns.

Questions people ask about Kitchener bun

Good reading and sources

• Kitchener bun on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data