Making Sticky Buns

Fully baked buns

I've decided to do more cooking and baking. It's not that I wasn't doing enough before, but more that I get tired of staring longingly at these shelves full of cookbooks and coming up with reasons not to make new things (e.g., "Ice cream is bad for you. Don't make more." or "That recipe will mean a trip to the grocery store." or "I have enough to eat this week. What will I even do with more?"). So my local friends and acquaintances should get ready for more meal invitations and more treats in the office.

Having laid bare my inner überpragmatic psyche and my occasional desire to beat it down, I come to the topic of today's entry: sticky buns. A while back I wrote a post about the differences between challah and brioche. Another difference is that there are all sorts of things you can do with brioche dough, such as sticky buns or brioche au chocolat, that I don't often see people do with challah (though perhaps they do -- anyone?). In that post and for today's recipe, I used Joanne Chang's recipe from Flour, which remains my favorite baking book. She also claims that her sticky bun recipe won her fame on the Food Network. How can one resist such a post?

The problem with the sticky buns, though, is that the recipe makes 8 huge buns. And Chang clearly states that they are best served warm or within a couple hours of baking. Not exactly a solo baking/eating endeavor. So I waited until I was having some folks over for brunch. That was this morning.

Imperfectly rolled dough, spread
with filling.

Brioche, of course, is a yeasted dough. I've done a bit of dessert baking with yeast, mostly to make babka. The doughs I've used for that, though, are not nearly as rich as brioche (which the astute reader will recall is packed with eggs and butter). I wasn't sure what this would do to the experience, but my brioche dough was pretty easy to roll out and handle. The only slight hitch was that the assembled buns need to rise for 2 hours prior to baking, and then bake for 45 minutes. So it was an early morning. But my sleep habits lately are such that every morning is early, whether I like it or not. This wasn't a problem. (And gosh, I'm really revealing a lot in this post)

Not quite evenly
sized "log"

So to make the sticky buns, one rolls out the dough into a big rectangle. My dough handling skills have hugely improved over the past year or two. I'm proud of that. What this project taught me is that they have not improved enough. Here's why. After rolling the dough and spreading the filling (sugar, cinnamon, almonds) all over it, it gets rolled up tightly. Turns out that small variations in dough thickness get magnified in this process. Note the size variation in the photos. This was not intended to accommodate guests with varying appetites (though it did, so was fine in the end).

Sliced buns getting
ready to rise

The rolled "log" is then sliced into 8 not-quite-equal pieces, and these are placed in a baking dish containing what Chang calls "goo." The "goo" was basically a cooked concoction of butter, cream, sugar, and more almonds. These are then allowed to rise for a couple hours. And you can see that they got a whole lot bigger. Crazy, no?

Check it out-
They rose!

After rising for a couple hours they get baked, and then -- after cooling for a while -- inverted such that the "goo" becomes the glaze on top of the sticky buns.

If I may say so (and I suppose I can, because I didn't make up the recipe), these were really good. The outside was crispy. The inside soft and, well, gooey. And the whole combination was absurdly sweet and delicious. I'd like to make them again, but I might be too busy trying other new recipes.

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