DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MODERATE-TO-DIFFICULT
Have you been craving a soft and fluffy bun with distinct honey notes and that familiar cinnamon flavor? You’ve come to the right place!
Cinnamon Sticky Buns
Ingredients
Dough (1.25kg)
- 468 g ABC+ (11.5% Flour)
- 116 g Cake Flour (8% Low protein flour)
- 234 g Water
- 29 g Powdered Milk Preferably "Baker's Powdered Milk"
- 88 g Eggs
- 116 g Sugar
- 11 g Salt
- 11 g Osmotolerant Yeast (Gold label yeast)
- 175 g Unsalted Butter (Cold, but pounded flat and malleable)
Filling
- 50 g White Sugar
- 50 g Brown Sugar
- 4 g Cinnamon
- 200 g Pastry Cream (see recipe below)
- 50 g Pecan pieces
- 150 g Raisins (optional)
Glaze
- 225 g Brown Sugar
- 128 g Unsalted Butter
- 2 g Salt
- 80 g Honey
- 6 g Vanilla Extract
- 2 g Cinnamon
- 50 g Pecan pieces
Pastry Cream (butter-free version)
- 169 g Milk
- 12 g Corn Starch
- 42 g Sugar
- 33 g Egg Yolk (approximately 2 yolks)
Instructions
Make the dough
- Mix all the ingredients together except the butter and half the sugar – about 7 minutes on speed 2. The dough should be fairly strong and you should be able to open a gluten window that looks like a short or improved mix.
- Add the remaining sugar and mix another 5 minutes.
- Add the cold, but malleable butter. Mix another 5 minutes or until 100% of the butter is incorporated and the dough is cleaning the sides of the bowl. Check the dough again for strength. A gluten window should look closer to an intensive mix. Mix longer if it is not quite strong enough.
- Allow a bulk fermentation of 1 hour at room temperature. Desired dough temperature is about 74F.
Make the Glaze (can be done in advance)
- Cream the sugar and butter until smooth.
- Add the salt, honey, vanilla, cinnamon and keep mixing until light and creamy.
- Add in the pecans and mix slowly just to incorporate thoroughly.
- Set aside until needed. Can be stored at room temperature for a few weeks or refrigerated for a year.
Make the Pastry Cream (can be made in advance)
- In a medium heat-resistant bowl, mix half the sugar (21g) with the cornstarch. Gently whisk in the egg yolks (approximately 2 yolks). Try to not incorporate any air.
- Boil the milk in a small sauce pan with the other half of the sugar (21g). Stir constantly as it gets closer to boiling.
- Pour about 1/3 of the boiling milk into the starch-sugar-egg mixture, whisking the entire time.
- Pour this 1/3 milk-starch-sugar-egg mixture back into the sauce pan with the remaining 2/3 boiling milk. Whisk constantly.
- When the mixture starts to boil again, reduce heat and continue cooking the mixture for 2 more minutes. Whisk constantly. It should become a smooth, yellow custard.
- Pour the mixture into a shallow container and immediately place plastic wrap on it so a skin does not develop. Place in the refrigerator and do not use until it's fully cooled.
- Pastry cream can be kept in the refrigerator for 3 days.
Make the Filling
- Place 200g of the chilled pastry cream (from above) in a bowl and make smooth with a silicone spatula.
- Add the brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon. You may have a few pastry cream lumps and that's ok.
- Do not add the pecans (and raisins) here. You will add them in later.
Assemble the Cinnamon Buns
- Lightly butter your baking pans.
- Place about 2 Tbsp (around 35g) of glaze into the base of each well of the baking pans. There will be 12 wells to fill.
- Take your fermented dough and divide in half. Roll out each piece to be 16" wide and about 4mm thick (about 1/8"). Your final length will vary, what's important is that you have 16" in width.
- Spread filling evenly across the entire flattened dough except for about a 1" border on the end closest to you (see pictures). When measuring the 16" width, this means you have filling across the top 15" of dough with a 1" border left bare on the bottom.
- Sprinkle half the pecans (and half the raisins if using them) evenly over the filling.
- Starting on the end away from you (the end opposite where you left a 1" border with no filling), roll the dough towards you until you have a tight cylinder. Seal the crease.
- Slice the cylindrical into approximately 110-120g pieces (about 1 1/4" pieces). Place into the wells of the baking pan that is pre-buttered and which has glaze inside.
Proof and bake
- Cover with a damp towel and allow to proof at 80F for about 1.5 hrs (a little more if your kitchen is much cooler). You can also cover in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for 1 day. If you time it right, you can have fresh baked buns for breakfast! Just remember that if you are refrigerating them, it takes about an hour for them to reach room temperature, so proofing time could be quite a bit longer this way.
- Bake at about 350F for 17 minutes.
- When finished, place parchment paper over hot pan, cover with a flat baking sheet. Invert the entire thing so all the buns fall out onto the parchment paper. Glaze will drip over the tops.
- Allow to cool before enjoying.
This recipe is not rated “moderate-to-difficult” because the individual steps are particularly hard, but because there are a lot more steps in total. There is the initial challenge of making a good brioche-like dough, the pastry cream, filling and a glaze. There are a lot of pots and pans to wash and more things to keep track of. But the end result is to die for. My family’s description when they take a bite: “This is, without a doubt, the perfect food.”. So it’s worth it! Also, the glaze can be made in advance and left out at room temperature for a few weeks without issue or refrigerated for a year. The filling can also be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator for about 3 days without any problems. Making things in advance really cuts down on the amount of work that needs to be done on your bake day.
Speaking of your bake day, you can even assemble and pan everything but then wrap things in plastic and refrigerate overnight. I do this when I want to surprise my family with fresh baked cinnamon buns for breakfast!
The Pan
Let’s start by talking about pans. A good cinnamon roll should be placed in wide wells so that they bake into the proper form and retain the glaze. It is also needed at the end when the baked buns are inverted onto parchment paper – the hot glaze then automatically pours over the top of the buns (see end of this recipe for details and pictures). In any case, I searched far and wide and finally found these pans here. They are the only ones that are available, are high quality and are sold for a reasonable price. You can’t go wrong.
Now that we have the pans, let’s make some Cinnamon Buns!
Make the dough
This dough is basically a brioche, except that the percentage of butter (30%) is less than a typical brioche (50-60%). This means the dough will be easier to make in a KitchenAid mixer. Real brioche dough at 60% butter is very difficult to make in a KitchenAid, but this 30% version works well for most people. Please comment below if you have tips or tricks when making the dough. Everyone can benefit from real experience.
Start by mixing everything together except for the butter and about half the sugar. Some of the sugar is left out to avoid competition with the gluten for water. The rest of the sugar is added once the gluten is well-hydrated and happy. The butter is left to the end because it’s important for the gluten to form strong chains and interconnections before something like butter disrupts that.
So holding back the butter and half the sugar, mix for about 7 minutes (or when you feel you got an improved mix). When the dough is well-developed, add in the remaining sugar and continue mixing for about 5 more minutes.
TIP: This is really important. Do not add the second half of your sugar until you are sure you have a strong well-developed dough. The quickest way to ruin your creation is to add too much sugar too soon.
Take your butter out of the refrigerator now. Between plastic or parchment paper, pound it so it becomes thinner and malleable. Place the butter into the mixer and continue mixing for about 5 more minutes (or until fully incorporated). If you open a gluten window now, you should see evidence of a smooth strong dough and it would be considered an intensive mix.
At this stage, if your dough looks like a thick soup and super-wet, then you probably added too much sugar too soon or you added the butter too soon. The dough really needs to be well developed before you add a lot of sugar and fat.
Your desired dough temperature is about 74F. Allow the dough to bulk ferment for about 1 hour.
Make the glaze
The glaze is really easy to make. So easy, in fact, that I didn’t bother taking any pictures 🙂 . Simply cream the sugar and butter until it’s smooth. Add the salt, honey, vanilla and cinnamon and continue mixing everything until it’s light and creamy. At the very end, add your pecan pieces on slow speed so you don’t break them into dust. This concoction can be stored in the refrigerator for as long as you need or on your counter for a few weeks.
I like to save time by pre-greasing my pans and then putting about 2 Tbsp (approximately 35g) of glaze into each well.
Prepare the Pastry Cream
Well, you wanted to impress all your friends by making cinnamon buns 100% from scratch, right? Here’s your chance to really live it up by making the pastry cream yourself too.
Start by adding half the sugar (21g) with the cornstarch. Whisk in 2 egg yolks into this powder mix (avoid incorporating air).
Now boil the milk in a small saucepan with the other half of the sugar (21g) and stir it constantly so a skin doesn’t form.
Now pour about 1/3 of the boiling milk into starch-sugar-egg mixture and whisk the entire time.
Pour this entire mixture back into the milk still boiling in the sauce pan and keep whisking. As the mixture comes back to a boil, you will notice the consistency becomes more and more like a custard. Turn down the heat a bit and keep whisking for another 2 minutes.
After 2 minutes, pour the mixture onto a shallow container and cover in plastic (with plastic touching the surface). This prevents a skin from forming. Place in the refrigerator.
I am a bit lazy, so oftentimes, I take the sauce pan and put it directly in a cold water bath to rapidly cool the pastry cream inside. Once fully cooled, I put the pot in the refrigerator for later use. Since this cream will be going in a cinnamon roll, if a little skin forms, no big deal…
This pastry cream can keep in the refrigerator for 3 days. Make sure it is fully chilled before using it. Avoid tasting it too much, despite the temptation. Although you theoretically made more than you need, you lost more to bowl transfers and evaporation than you think! You will probably have just enough for the final filling.
Make the filling
Now that the pastry cream is made and fully cooled, we can make the filling. This step is really easy. Simply dispense 200g of pastry cream in a bowl and press and mix it with a silicone spatula. It might stay a little lumpy and that’s fine.
Now add your brown and white sugar as well as the cinnamon. Mix it all together until well incorporated. Again, lumpy is fine here. All done! See, that was easy.
Assembly
Everything is ready to go now. Take out your fermented dough and divide it into two pieces. Roll out each piece into 16″ wide 1/8″ thick pieces. I don’t specify the exact length because what’s important is the 16″ width and thickness – the length will be whatever it will be.
Spread half the filling evenly across the entire dough except for a 1″ border near the edge closest to you.
Now sprinkle half your pecans (and half the raisins if you are into that 🙁 ). I’m not a fan of raisins so leave them out.
Starting on the end away from you, roll the dough until you have a tight cylinder. Seal the crease.
Slice this cylinder into about 1 1/4″ pieces or around 110-120g each. Place the sliced pieces into the pan wells that already have the glaze ready to go. Remember that the side facing up will end up being your bottom later. So if you have one side you like a lot better, it should face the glaze. Repeat everything for your second tray.
OK! All done. Now you can cover the trays with a damp towel and let them proof for about 90 minutes at 80F, or a little longer if your room is much cooler.
Alternatively, you can immediately (without proofing) cover everything in plastic and store in the refrigerator overnight. I do this when I want fresh baked buns for breakfast. But a word of caution: They are not actually proofing when they come out of your refrigerator. It could easily take an hour or more to warm up to room temperature. So to make things work, I either need to wake up really early (like a legitimate baker) or I speed things along by putting my trays on a heating pad (see next).
The heating pad
This is a cool little trick I made up when I wanted a more even proof temperature. I use these pads that are made to help plants germinate and then put the thermostat inside the dough. Works like a charm. I will do a separate post on this soon. Stay tuned.
Bake and invert
Bake the buns at 350F for about 17 minutes (+/-). When finished, place a piece of parchment on top of the hot buns. Place a baking sheet over the top of that. Carefully flip the whole thing upside down so the hot buns fall onto the parchment paper. Do this while everything is hot and fresh out of the oven or else the sugar glaze will seize up and the buns will stay stuck in the wells.
Let everything cool completely before enjoying. And I think you will enjoy them a whole lot! These taste a little better than they look, and I think they look fabulous.
Did you try this recipe? If so, please rate it below and feel free to comment if you have any tips, tricks or questions.