SYDNEY—As Easter approaches, Australians are cooking up a heated debate: Should hot cross buns taste like pizza?
Cassandra Davidson doesn’t think so, though she was intrigued by the pizza-flavored hot cross buns sold by a local supermarket chain. Davidson cut them in half, put cheese and pizza-flavored crackers inside, as suggested on the package, and warmed them up on a sandwich press. She said it tasted like a grilled cheese, but the pizza flavoring didn’t really come through. She didn’t have another.
“It was more of a bread roll that they’ve just called a hot cross bun,” said Davidson, a 32-year-old nurse. “I don’t know what makes it a hot cross bun. Maybe the fact that they’ve just put the cross on the top.”
The hot cross bun, historically made with fruit and spice, is getting a makeover in Australia—with bun-crazed bakeries and supermarkets trying to grab the spotlight with increasingly eccentric Easter creations. (Sauerkraut in your hot cross bun, anyone?)
But not everyone wants to do away with centuries of tradition.
“We taste-tested novelty hot cross buns so you don’t have to,” blared one headline in the Sydney Morning Herald.
“What better way to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ than with a special-edition novelty foodstuff?” chided another reviewer in the Weekend Australian Magazine, concluding the pizza buns were “bloody awful.”
“Savory is a bit weird,” said Adam Moore, 47, a culinary judge and chef. “It just feels like I should be eating something sweet.”
30 million buns
Bun varieties now being bandied about Australia range from super sweet to downright meaty. One hot cross bun has raspberry fudge, jellies, white chocolate and a sprinkle of coconut, and is based on a popular treat called an Iced VoVo.
Humble Bakery in Sydney is offering what it calls a Hot Cross Reu-Bun—a fruitless version filled with pastrami, horseradish cream, sauerkraut, pickles and Dijon mustard.
The origins of hot cross buns aren’t entirely clear, some scholars say. One theory suggests medieval monks marked them with the cross at Easter as a nod to the holiday’s religious significance. Many cultures use dried fruit and sweeteners in bread to mark important occasions.
The novelty buns have their fans. Helen Garkinis liked the Iced VoVo buns so much that at one point she had about 50 buns stashed in her freezer, with plans to share them with family. The raspberry cuts the sweetness, she said, and goes well with the white chocolate.
“When I first heard they were released, I was like a bit of a crazy person,” said Garkinis, 50, who went to six stores looking for them.
One of the biggest challenges was emulating the texture of crackers and biscuits in the form of a bun, said Thea Comino, a bakery-product developer at Coles, the grocery chain selling the pizza-flavored and Iced VoVo buns. For the pizza bun, based on a popular pizza-flavored cracker, soy grits were used atop the bun. Tomato granules were baked throughout the dough.
“We knew it was going to generate some hype and interest,” she said. “But never did I think it would be this big.”
Special-edition buns are already sold out in some stores. Coles and Woolworths, Australia’s other main supermarket chain, expect to sell a combined 30 million buns the week of Easter—enough for each person in this country of about 27 million to have a bun, plus a bite.
St. Stephen’s, an Anglican church in a Sydney suburb, is advertising that hot cross buns will be available at one of its Good Friday services—likely the traditional ones, as well as a fruitless version.
Senior minister Prash Colombage isn’t too bothered by the zany buns, as long as they have crosses on them. In fact, as a kid, Colombage said he didn’t like the dried fruit and would try to pick them out of the buns.
“If someone wants to provide us with their own stash of savory ones, we’ll happily serve savory too,” he said.
Risqué buns
Other buns sold in Australia include some made with cheese and Vegemite—the yeasty spread that is a local favorite. There are buns filled with Biscoff biscuit spread, and buns made with chips of Cadbury Caramilk, which is a blend of caramelized white chocolate.
A “sticky date” hot cross bun has dates and caramel fudge.
“It’s tough out there, it really is, cause everyone’s doing really cool buns,” said Eddie Stewart, who co-owns Tokyo Lamington, a Japanese-Australian fusion bakery, with shops in Sydney and Melbourne.
One of his offerings this year is a hot cross bun infused with yuzu, an Asian citrus. Key to the recipe: soaking raisins in imported yuzu juice for three months with bits of candied lemon and orange zest.
The raisins are mixed in a cinnamon-bun dough—but bakers have to be careful not to smash the raisins because they are so full of juice. Once baked, the buns are brushed with a glaze made from caramelized sugar and yuzu juice.
“They’re not like super, super yuzu in your face,” said Stewart, 38. “You more get those floral tones and notes.”
Stewart said he experimented with a bun with chocolate and miso, the fermented bean paste used often in Japanese cuisine. He said it tasted good with dark chocolate, but decided to hold off on selling that one for now.
“The miso bun,” he said, “was a bit more risqué.”
Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com