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.
