08 April 2013

Bitty Cinnamon Rolls



The last two times I made bread, I snagged a bit of the dough to make some sweet rolls.  The first attempt was a cream cheese/strawberry mess of a roll that was too gooey to even cut into individual pieces.  I ended up baking the whole log in a round with a slashed top.  It came out of the oven looking pretty good, but caved in as it cooled into a very moist mess.  Yum.  We ate most of it, and I learned that my bread dough would definitely make a good sweet roll base.  As long as I used a drier filling.

Next up, plain old cinnamon-sugar rolls.  I used about a fourth of my dough recipe to make a pie tin's worth of rolls, shaping the rest of the dough into three small round loaves.  One thing I've been doing lately that seems to result in a moister, sweeter dough is to dump my whole grains (oats, whole wheat flour, flax, etc.) in with all the wet ingredients and letting that sit for awhile--30 minutes to a few hours as I have time/need of.  I think this lets those grains soak up more liquid before adding enough white flour to make the dough hold its shape.  If I would add all the flours at the same time, I would end up with a dough that seems like the right consistency but would dry out some as the whole grains continued to soak up moisture.  Make sense?

Anyhow.  Itty bitty cinnamon rolls.  

I rolled my bit of dough out pretty thin, spread with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and then sliced them about 3-4 inches across after they were rolled up.  These were tall, skinny, and just funny looking in my pan, so I squashed them down with my hand until they just touched each other at the edges.  

Let rise until double and bake for about 15 minutes at 350F.  I had some leftover icing from another project that I slathered over the top when they had cooled some.  So yummy when they were still a little warm.  And good the next two days too.