I’ve baked quite a few things from Carole Walter’s fabulous book, Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More: 200 Anytime Treats and Special Sweets for Morning to Midnight, but if I had to pick one favorite so far, it would be a particular dough. A dough that takes literally minutes to make. A dough that freezes exceedingly well, and can be used to make many different pastries. And a dough whose taste and texture approach or exceed that of homemade Danish pastry, with a fraction of the time and effort.

Sound interesting? It’s Walter’s rich sour cream dough, or simple sweet dough, which can be used interchangeably. The difference between the two is that the former uses milk, while the latter uses sour cream. The end result is a rich, tender, flaky, and flavorful yeast bread that can be used to make braids, tea rings, buns, kuchen, sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, etc. If I have some milk or sour cream that need to be used up, I make a batch of this dough (or two), and freeze it. It is phenomenal.

A few weeks ago, I made the Dimpled Sugar Cake. I suspect that dish will make rare appearances in my house, BECAUSE WE ATE THE WHOLE THING IN ONE DAY. No wonder I have to spend so much time at the gym. For a great picture of the cake, and a review of Walters’ book, check out Ivonne’s blog. Ivonne describes the Dimpled Sugar Cake as “heaven in a pan.” To be honest, I was too busy eating the buttery, brown sugary creation to try to stage a decent picture.

Recently, I decided to try the crumb buns. These are little pillows of warm, yeasty goodness, sprinkled with a streusel topping (I used my own recipe). I pulled the dough out of the freezer the night before, and let it thaw in the refrigerator. In the morning, I shaped the buns, let them rise for an hour, and baked them. If you wanted to, you could shape them the night before and keep them in the refrigerator overnight, ready to pop in the oven the next morning. Is that great, or what? Note: the streusel topping that I made is not terribly sweet – if you like it very sweet, add a bit of white sugar to the mix.

These buns are my entry for this month’s Bread Baking Day #12, created by Zorra, and hosted by Aparna of the wonderful vegetarian blog, My Diverse Kitchen. Her choice this month was “small breads.” Be on the lookout for her roundup of everyone’s entries. And be sure to check out Susan’s weekly YeastSpotting roundup at Wild Yeast Blog. Recipe after the jump . . .
continue reading "Delicious and Easy Crumb Buns"

Oh, I’ve been wanting to make these every since I got Dorie’s book, and I’m so excited that I was able to pick them for my turn. Thanks to all of you for visiting my blog (I love visitors!), to Laurie of Quirky Cupcake for creating TWD, and particular thanks to Dorie Greenspan for writing her many wonderful cookbooks, and for giving me permission to reprint her recipe for Honey Pecan Sticky Buns.

Now, I like cinnamon buns, but I LOVE sticky buns. So much so that – are you ready? – I only have them once every couple of years. Yep, you read that correctly. First, because most sticky buns aren’t worth the calories, and second, because I tend to lose control when good ones are around. The operative word here is “good,” and these are very, very good. Even Master Chow, a cinnamon bun devotee, thought these were outstanding, and particularly enjoyed the honey flavor that came through. The caramel was perfect – it did not break by teeth, nor attempt to pull out my fillings.

I used a clover honey, and coarsely chopped 1 cup of the pecans, but left the other 1/2 cup in whole pieces. I had a tablespoon of raisins left over from another project, so I threw those in. I ended up with 11 buns (that little nub you see is an end piece), not 15 (and I ended up eating four of them, or was it five?), so I baked them in a 9-inch Pyrex pie plate, which worked out perfectly. They did take a lot longer to brown than I expected – about 20 minutes longer, in fact.

The brioche dough was fabulous. Other recipes that I’ve tried had a very strong yeast flavor, but these rolls had a perfect balance of flavors and textures. Lordie, these were good. Gooey, sticky, crunchy, buttery . . . I could go on, but this IS a family blog. Definitely on the repeat list, and the beauty of the brioche recipe is that I can make a batch of cinnamon buns for Master Chow, and a batch of Honey Pecan Sticky buns.

To see how everyone else faired with their sticky buns, check out the TWD blogroll. For next week, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook has chosen French Chocolate Brownies. Recipe after the jump . . . .
continue reading "Tuesdays with Dorie – Sticky Buns! Yeah!"

Buttery brioche. Rich pastry cream. Cinnamon. What’s not to like?

Peabody, of Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, selected Dorie Greenspan’s Raisin Brioche Snails for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (check out the link for the entire blogroll). And these tasty little morsels seemed to get better the longer they sat around!

First let me say that I am mightily impressed by all those bakers who made this dough by hand. It took me about 20 minutes of kneading with the Kitchen Aid to produce the brioche, while pressing on the mixer to keep it from dancing off the counter top!

I baked only half of the rolls, and froze the other half for later. A few more thoughts: next time I make this, I’m going to infuse the warm milk with half a vanilla bean pod, as it would have benefited from a stronger vanilla flavor. I am not a big raisin fan, and will use something else in the future, but flaming the raisins in rum (WOW!) was so much fun, and really gave them a lot of flavor. Note to self: rum-soaked raisins taste a whole lot better than plain old raisins.

Finally, when I made the glaze, I added a few drops of orange oil to the mixture to give it a bit more zing, and I’m glad I did. If you don’t have orange oil, add some finely grated orange zest, starting with about a 1/2 teaspoon (for a full batch of glaze) and increase the amount to taste. Personally, I like a strong citrus flavor.

For the original recipe, check out Peabody’s blog, or Dorie’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Below is my adaptation of the recipe.

Brioche Raisin Snails
Adapted slightly from a recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours

1 cup moist, plump raisins
3 tablespoons dark rum
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
Scant 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 recipe for Golden Brioche Loaves, chilled and ready to shape (make the full recipe and cut the dough in half after refrigerating overnight)
1 recipe Pastry Cream

For The Optional Glaze

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
About 1/2 teaspoon milk
2-3 drops orange oil, or 1/2 t. finely grated orange zest

Getting Ready: Line one large or two smaller baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

If you want tips on how to flambe safely, see here and here. Put the raisins in a small saucepan, cover them with hot water and let them steep for about 4 minutes, until they are plumped. Drain the raisins, return them to the saucepan and, stirring constantly, warm them over low heat. DO NOT WALK AWAY. The raisins heat up rather quickly, and you can burn them in an instant.

Be sure you have the pan lid ready, and clear your cooking area of all flammable materials. When the raisins are very hot, pull the pan from the heat and pour the rum over the raisins. Standing back, ignite the rum. Stir until the flames go out, then cover and set aside. (The raisins and rum an be kept in a covered jar for up to 1 day.) If things look like they’re getting out of control, clamp the lid on the pan.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon together.

On a flour dusted surface, roll the dough into a rectangle about 12 inches wide and 16 inches long, with a short end toward you. Spread the pastry cream across the dough, leaving 1-inch strip bare on the side farthest from you. Scatter the raisins over the pastry cream and sprinkle the raisins and cream with the cinnamon sugar. Starting wit the side nearest you, roll the dough into a cylinder, keeping the roll as tight as you can. (At this point, you can wrap the dough airtight and freeze it up to 2 months. Or, if you do not want to make the full recipe, use as much of the dough as you’d like and freeze the remainder.)

With a serrated knife, using a gentle sawing motion, trim just a tiny bit from the ends if they’re ragged or not well filled, then cut the log into rounds a scant 1 inch thick. Put the snails on the lined baking sheet(s), flat side down, leaving some puff space between them.

Lightly cover the snails with plastic wrap and set the baking sheet(s) in a warm place until the snails have doubles in volume–they’ll be puffy and soft–about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Getting Ready To Bake: When the snails have almost fully risen, preheat the oven: depending on the number of baking sheets you have, either center a rack in the oven or position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Remove the wax paper, and bake the snails for about 25 minutes (rotate the sheets if you’re using two, from top to bottom and front to back after 15 minutes), or until they are puffed and richly browned. Using a metal spatula, transfer the snails onto a cooling rack.

If You Want To Glaze The Snails: Put a piece of wax paper under the rack of warm rolls to act as a drip catcher. Put the confectioners’ sugar into a small bowl, and stir in a teaspoon of water. Keep adding water drop by drop until you have an icing that falls from the tip of a spoon. Add the vanilla extract, then drizzle the icing over the hot snails.

Golden Brioche Loaves

2 packets active dry yeast
1/3 cup just-warm-to-the-touch water
1/3 cup just-warm-to-the-touch whole milk
3 3/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature but still slightly firm

To Make The Brioche: Put the yeast, water and milk in the bowl of a stand mixer and, using a wooden spoon, stir until the yeast is dissolved. Add the flour and salt, and fit into the mixer with the dough hook, if you have one. Toss a kitchen towel over the mixer, covering the bowl as completely as you can– this will help keep you, the counter and your kitchen floor from being showered in flour. Turn the mixer on and off a few short pulses, just to dampen the flour (yes, you can peek to see how you’re doing), then remove the towel, increase the mixer speed to medium-low and mix for a minute or two, just until the flour is moistened. At this point, you’ll have a fairly dry, shaggy mess.

Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula, set the mixer to low and add the eggs, followed by the sugar. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for about 3 minutes, until the dough forms a ball. Reduce the speed to low and add the butter in 2-tablespoon-size chunks, beating until each piece is almost incorporated before adding the next. You’ll have a dough that is very soft, almost like batter. Increase the speed to medium-high and continue to beat until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, about 10 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a clean bowl (or wash out the mixer bowl and use it), cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature until nearly doubled in size, 40 to 60 minutes, depending upon the warmth of your room.

Deflate the dough by lifting it up around the edges and letting it fall with a slap to the bowl. Cover the bowl with the plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Slap the dough down in the bowl every 30 minutes until it stops rising, about 2 hours, then leave the uncovered dough in the refrigerator to chill overnight.

The next day, butter and flour two 8 1/2-x-4 1/2-inch pans.

Pull the dough from the fridge and divide it into 2 equal pieces. Cut each piece of the dough into 4 equal pieces and roll each piece into a log about 3 1/2 inches long. Arrange 4 logs crosswise in the bottom of each pan. Put the pans on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat, cover the pans lightly with wax paper and leave the loaves at room temperature until the dough almost fills the pans, 1 to 2 hours. (Again, rising time with depend on how warm the room is.)

Getting Ready To Bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

To Make the Glaze: Add the zest or orange oil to the powdered sugar. Mix the milk into the powdered sugar drop by drop, until you have a consistency that you can drizzle onto the rolls.

Bake the loaves until they are well risen and deeply golden, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer the pans to racks to cool for 15 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the pans and turn the loaves out onto the racks. Invert again and cool for at least 1 hour.

Pastry Cream

1 cup whole milk
3 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch, sifted
3/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into bits at room temperature

Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan.

Meanwhile, in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk the egg yolks together with the sugar and cornstarch until thick and well blended. Still whisking, drizzle in about 1/4 cup of the hot milk– this will temper, or warm, the yolks so they won’t curdle. Whisking all the while, slowly pour in the remainder of the milk. Put the pan over medium heat and, whisking vigorously, constantly and thoroughly (making sure to get the edges of the pot), bring the mixture to a boil. Keep at a boil, still whisking, for 1 to 2 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat.

Whisk in the vanilla extract. Let sit for 5 minutes, then whisk in the bits of butter, stirring until they are full incorporated and the pastry cream is smooth and silky. Scrape the cream into a bowl. You can press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the cream to create an airtight seal and refrigerate the pastry cream until cold.

It had been a while since I baked with yeast – years, in fact. And I grew helping my mom mill her own wheat flour, and bake whole wheat loaves. Every Sunday, we had homemade pizza with tomato sauce canned from our own tomatoes. So, how can someone with that background develop a Fear of Yeast?

Stop baking with it for a while.

Needless to say, I was determined to get back on that horse. Inspired by Ivonne’s recent creation, I girded my loins and hit the kitchen this past weekend. Armed with Margaux Sky’s Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings: The Best Sandwiches in America, I decided to bake some cinnamon rolls, which I’d never made before.

Both Ari, of Baking and Books, and Ivonne have used some of the book’s recipes, and warned that the amount of flour the recipes called for could be off. They were right. Another reason to love the culinary blogosphere – you get reports back from the trenches.

So, I started baking. I cleared off the kitchen counter. I set out my ingredients, and got to work. And then . . . I ran out of flour. No problem, I thought, I’ll just go down to the freezer and check my back stock. Among the rice flour, garbanzo flour, spelt flour, etc., I found . . . pastry flour. Which you don’t use to make bread.

What the heck, I thought, there are times to live dangerously, and this is one of those times. Never mind that my freshly bought yeast wasn’t bubbling, either. I ended up using 7 cups of all-purpose flour, and 4 cups of pastry flour.

I thoroughly enjoyed kneading the dough. Working dough by hand gives me a feeling of being connected to the earth. I think of women doing exactly the same thing, for thousands of years. It’s a zen experience. I kneaded for about 10 minutes instead of the 4 stated in the recipe, partly because I enjoyed it, but mostly because I was trying to develop as much gluten as possible in the pastry flour.

After I rolled up the dough (the wrong way, but it didn’t really matter in the end), I had an oddly shaped log, which I then cut up. I filled the muffin cups and put them in the refrigerator to rise overnight. The next morning, while they baked, I made the glaze, which I adjusted in terms of liquid and flavorings, otherwise I would have ended up with a thin, watery, and tasteless glaze.

Our thoughts? These were easy to make, and pretty tasty. Some of them were huge – 3 inches across! The insides were moist and fully cooked. On the downside, Master Chow and I both thought that the dough lacked depth of flavor. I don’t know if this was due to my pastry flour incident or not, but I’d like to make them again using the correct flour. And even though I used this cinnamon, they didn’t have a strong enough cinnamon flavor. My favorite part was the orange glaze I made for them, which had a nice, intense taste.

Would I make them again? Yes, but I’m going to continue my quest for the ultimate cinnamon roll. So many recipes, so little time! I’d better get cracking.

Oh, and yesterday, while I was digging through the freezer, guess what I found? A new, unopened bag of all-purpose King Arthur Flour. ARGH!

Cinnamon Rolls
Adapted from Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings: The Best Sandwiches in America

Sweet Dough

• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 12 cups all-purpose flour (Note – this is an approximation – stop at around 9 cups and feel the dough. Keep adding flour until the dough loses most of its stickiness but not all of it. Remember, you’re going to be adding more flour when you knead the dough. I used 11 cups of flour, total.)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Put the water and milk in large bowl. Dissolve the yeast in the mixture. Add the cream. Let stand until foamy. The recipe says about five minutes, but mine took almost 20. If you are using yeast well within the expiration date, don’t worry and be patient.

Generously grease a large bowl, and a muffin tin. Set the tin aside. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla to the yeast mixture.

Slowly add the flour and salt to the wet ingredients (see Note above). Place the dough on a floured counter top and knead for 5 to 10 minutes.

Place the dough in the prepared bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm, dry place to rise for about 1 hour. Rose Levy Berenbaum suggest letting dough rise in a cold oven (make sure the oven is off!) with only the interior light turned on, and this has worked well for me.

Punch dough down and separate into two portions. You will be using one portion to make the cinnamon rolls, and you can reserve the other in the refrigerator for later use.

Cinnamon Rolls

• 1 portion Sweet Dough
• 4 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter, melted
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 3 Tablespoons cinnamon

Icing

• 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 2/3 cup half-and-half or cream, or any combination thereof
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• zest of one orange
• 4 drops of orange oil

Make sure your oven is empty (heh, heh, that’s another story). Place rack in middle of the oven and preheat oven to 375 F.

You will need a lot of room to roll out the dough. Sprinkle a counter top with flour, and roll out the dough into a rectangular shape. The dough should be slightly thicker than a sheet of paper, and the long side of the rectangle should be perpendicular to your body.

In a large bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Mix well.

Spread the cinnamon mixture over the rolled out dough, and spread it to the edges.

The short side of the dough should be parallel to you. Tightly roll the dough away from you, forming a loaf. Fold the outer edges in as you roll, to hold the filling in.

Cut into 9-12 cinnamon rolls. Place them in the greased muffin cups. I had a couple midget rolls, so I put them in the middle cups so they would not burn before the larger ones finished cooking. Place the muffin tin on a baking sheet with an edge, like a jelly roll pan. This is essential, or you will have a big mess in your oven. The muffins rise a lot, and ooze everywhere.

Bake for 15-20 minutes – keep an eye on the rolls. Remove rolls immediately from tins and place on a plate.

While they are baking, you can make the glaze, which involves mixes together all the glaze ingredients. Add the half-and-half/cream and juice slowly to the powdered sugar, until the glaze reaches a consistency that you like. You may use less liquid than I did.

If you glaze the rolls immediately, they will absorb the mixture and just look shiny, so wait for them to cool a bit if you want a white, icing-like look. Enjoy!