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Sweet and Sticky Resolutions
Wednesday January 6, 2010 11:31 am by Kendra | Filed under life.
“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” — Mark Twain
Like many people, after the gluttony of the holidays, I resolved to eat better and exercise more. But on the second day of 2010, I decided to make cinnamon buns for my bread baking club.
They were supposed to be baked in December, so really, I was just upholding an outstanding resolution. Right? Does this mean I’ve already broken my new year’s resolution? Perhaps. But I think I’ll just redefine “eat better” to mean eat quality, homemade foods lovingly prepared. Sounds good to me.. anywho, let’s see how it went, shall we?
As a reminder, we are working through Peter Reinhart’s book, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. In this section, the formula is for cinnamon buns and sticky buns – I opted to make the cinnamon buns (the complete recipe I used is as the bottom of this post).
The first step was to combine the dough ingredients and let them rise. I was excited to use my new handy dandy measuring cup to see when my dough had doubled. We were headed out for evening church, so I hastily made my dough, threw it in my measuring bucket, where it sat at around 32 oz. We left for church and returned to our chilly home two hours later. When I went to inspect my dough, this is what it looked like:
Drat, it didn’t rise at all! Mike got a fire going, I moved the dough closer to the fire and next to the hot laptop fan, and we popped in a movie. Two hours later, although it was now nearly midnight, the results were much more satisfactory:
I began to roll out the dough as specified for smaller rolls. The goal was to get the dough 18″ wide by 9″ long and 2/3″ thick. I got the length and width pretty good, but fell short of the required thickness.
My dough looked to be closer to 1/3″ thickness instead of 2/3″. The book sternly states “don’t roll out the dough too thin or the finished buns will be tough and chewy rather than soft and plump”. Yikes. Letting it rise longer may have helped, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now, so I just moved on.
The next step was to apply the cinnamon sugar mixture. I already had some in pantry, leftover from some other endeavor, so I just slathered that across the dough.
I used less than the stated amount and it still seemed to be plenty. Next, it was time to roll up the dough and cut it up.
Look at all that sugary goodness! Cutting the dough always seems tricky, because I seem to pinch down the dough in the process. I thought maybe I should have rolled it tighter, but again, I made do. I put my 16 rolls in an oversized baking pan (14″ x 10″ maybe?). They weren’t perfect looking, but I figured a good glaze would cover a multitude of sins.
It was now after 1am. The dough was supposed to proof for two hours, or be put in the fridge, to be pulled out 3 to 4 hours prior to baking. Since I wanted to serve them for breakfast, and everything seemed to be rising slowly in our cold house, I just covered them and let them sit out the rest of the night. By 7am, they had risen some, but I wouldn’t say they doubled.
Nonetheless – I charged on! I put them in the oven to bake and got to work on the glaze. I didn’t have any lemon extract, but I did get some fancy vanilla paste for Christmas, so I decided to use it. As I was working, I had two hungry, young helpers, eager to participate. They got to do a little quality control on the frosting.
After 20 minutes or so, the buns came out, smelling heavenly.
I applied the glaze, which was really thick and basically obscured the rolls.
Then I allegedly waited the rest of the proscribed 20 minutes to let them cool before sampling. They were yummy!
Mike found the glaze too sweet - so maybe next time I’ll try the sticky buns, which use a brown sugar glaze that he prefers. Were my rolls tough and chewy vs soft and plump? Maybe a little on the chewy side, but I don’t think they were tough. The sweetness was pretty overpowering, even for me, but a nice cup of coffee helped with that.
Overall, they were a hit. We actually have a couple of cinnamon roll recipes we like (one is the Pioneer Woman’s rolls) – so it’s hard to say if these are the best we’ve ever had. Nonetheless, it was a sweet treat to enjoy.
Now for the other half of my new year’s resolution? I’m off to the gym!
Peter Reinhart’s Cinnamon Buns
From his formula in the “The Break Baker’s Apprentice”
Cinnamon Buns:
6 1/2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
5 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temp
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 tsp lemon extract or grated lemon zest (I used lemon zest)
3 1/2 unbleached bread (or all purpose) flour
2 tsp instant yeast or 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/8 to 1 1/4 cups whole milk or buttermilk, at room temp (I used whole milk)
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar (6 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar plus 1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon) (I used what I had on hand)
Fondant Glaze:
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp lemon, orange, or vanilla extract (I used I Tbsp vanilla bean paste)
6 Tbsp to 1/2 cup warm milk
Steps
- Cream together sugar, salt and shortening on medium-high in an electric mixer with paddle attachment.
- Whip in the egg and lemon until smooth.
- Then add flour, yeast, and milk.
- Mix on low speed until dough forms a ball.
- Switch to the dough hook and increase speed to medium, mixing for approximately 10 minutes.
Dough should be silky and supple, tacky but not sticky. If needed, add water or flour to achieve this texture. Dough should pass the windowpane test. - Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough to bowl, rolling it around to coat doug with oil.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap.
- Ferment at room temperature for approximately 2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.
- Mist the counter with spray oil and transfer dough to counter and shape buns:
- Roll out dough with rolling pin in to a rectangle, about 2/3 ” thick and 14″ by 12″ wide for larger buns or 18″ by 9″ for smaller buns
- Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over surface of dough.
- Roll up dough along the long side into cigar shaped log.
- With seam side down, cut dough into 8 to 12 pieces (1 3/4″ thick) for larger buns or 12 to 16 pieces (1 1/4″ thick) for smaller buns.
- Prepare the baking sheet for cinnamon buns:
- Line baking sheet with parchment paper, or spray with oil.
- Place buns ~ 1/2 inch apart, so they aren’t touching, but are close to one another.
- Proof at room temperature for 75 to 90 minutes, or until buns are touching and nearly doubled in size.
At this point, you can retard the buns in the fridge for up to two days, but pull the pan out of the fridge 3 to 4 hours before baking to allow buns to proof. - Preheat oven to 350 with the oven rack on the middle shelf.
- Bake cinnamon buns for 20 to 3o minutes, or until golden brown.
- Make fondant glaze:
- Sift 4 cups powdered sugar into a bowl.
- Add extract (I used vanilla).
- Add milk slowly, briskly whisking until all the sugar is dissolved — use only as much milk as needed to make a thick, smooth paste.
- Cool buns in the pan for about 10 minutes, then streak glaze acrosss tops while buns are warm, but not too hot.
- Remove buns from pan and place on cooling rack.
- Wait at least 20 minutes before serving (yeah right!).
Tags: bread, what's cookin
Why is that ruler so intimidating to me?!? I need to get back into this!