Last weekend, to change a bit from French bread and pastries I decided to try a recipe from my new Nordic cookbook and tried some cinnamon buns. As a first try, I didn’t know exactly what it would look like but I found the quantities quite unbalanced and in particular too much yeast, so I deliberately changed them. That plus the poor temperature control in the house in winters led to delicious but rather dense buns. So this time I decided to make it differently and to put a little less butter and more yeast and got a pretty decent result saying that for the second rise I let the dough out in the kitchen all night, where the temperature is anout 17deg when we’re up and it drops to 7deg by the time we wake up.
The process is actually simple. The ingredients for about 8 buns are the following: 250g of flour (hard flour for bread); 80ml of milk (I used soya milk because that’s what I had); 40g of butter + 40g at room temperature; 40g of sugar + 20g (I personally use only brown suger); 1 egg; 5g of salt; 6g of natural dry yeast; a few cardamom pods (I love the taste it gives to the buns, but it’s optional); cinnamon powder.
In a small pan heat the milk, the cardamom and the first 40g of butter, until the butter as melted. Add the 40g of sugar. Stir well. In a bowl add the flour, the yeast, the salt , the egg. Stir well. Add the mix from the pan and knead until smooth, and shiny. Let rise under a wet clothe until the dough is about twice bigger. If, like me the room temperature is low it takes quite some time. Once it has risen, move the dough on a sheet of cooking paper and roll the dought softly into a flat rectangle of a little less than 1cm high. With a spatula spread the butter at room temperature in a thin layer over the dough (on the long side of the dough leave a few cm without butter to close the rolls, then sprinkle cinnamon and the rest of the sugar on top of the butter. Roll the dough along the long edge starting from where the butter is, finishing where there is none, to for a long log. Then cut the buns and wait for the second rise (probably 1h). Heat the oven at 200deg. Move the buns in paper cases (I didn’t the first time and all the good filling went away instead of soaking into the bun, a pity!), add a egg wash if you fancy (I don’t) and bake for 12 to 15min. Just out from the oven is for me the best way to enjoy them!!
