Cinnamon Rolls - Pioneer Woman's recipe

My cinnamon roll recipe has been a hit since the first time I made them. I give all respect and acknowledgement to Pioneer Woman. Her recipe (with fabulous photo instructions, as she always provides) can be found here.

Pioneer Woman uses a maple frosting to cover her rolls. I'm not a fan of maple flavor so I use a different frosting which I will demonstrate in a future post.

But for now, let's go through the steps of making cinnamon rolls.....

The dough is the same recipe as for white bread dough. So if you want to make this recipe and use half for bread buns and half for cinnamon buns, well, that would be smart. I've done that a few times :)

Start by scalding milk, sugar, and oil.

When the mixture has been scalded and then cooled for an hour or so add some yeast and flour. I use white bread flour but all-purpose will work. Mix them all together and let the mixture sit for an hour. It will rise a bit so make sure it is in a large enough bowl to allow for expansion.

After the mixture has risen add in another cup of flour, some salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Kneading isn't really necessary but will help incorporate the ingredients together when the mixture gets stiff. This picture shows HALF of the final dough mixture.

And I wanted to accommodate Weeza's request of showing an additional item in the pictures to give an idea of scale. Philly cream cheese packages are a fairly recognizable size and shape so I hope this works for you :)

Roll the dough out into a rectangle. This looks less like a rectangle than a Weeble that wobbles but has fallen down on its side. But the intention is to make a rectangle. Good luck with yours :)

The recipe calls for about a cup of melted butter but I find that to be too messy and too rich... 2/3 of a cup is plenty. Drizzle the melted butter all over the dough except for the front inch or so. Then sprinkle a cup of sugar all over and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. I don't measure the cinnamon... just sprinkle until I think it's good enough :) Again, avoid the front inch of the dough.

Pioneer Woman doesn't add nuts or raisins here and neither do I. But if you had a nut or raisin deficiency that needed to be addressed in your diet then now would be the time to take care of that.

And.... we're rolling! Start at the end farthest from you and tightly roll the dough towards you. You'll thank me when you get to the end and you pinch to seal the front end of the dough to the roll. Keeping that final strip of dough free of butter and sugar makes it easier to seal dough to dough. Sealing dough to buttery dough is significantly harder.

I tried to get the whole roll in this shot but couldn't quite manage it. Anyways, the sealed roll is longer than the length of the rolled out dough from a few pictures above. That's because once it's all rolled up you will probably notice some thicker and thinner parts. It's best to even those out by lifting and gently stretching the thicker sections. The end result produces a longer roll than you started out with. Make sure you have the counter space to do this.

With a sharp knife, slice the rolls about 1 inch thick. For 1/2 the dough you'll have enough rolls to fill three 10" round cake or pie pans.

Let the pans sit for about 30 minutes to rise and then bake for 15-18 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

Here they are, all baked and yummy. The two pans on the right are 10", regular, Wilton brand cake pans. The rolls in those pans were fully cooked in about 15 minutes. The ones in the disposable pan on the left needed another 3 or 4 minutes to brown. Interesting! I learned a foodiestudent lesson when I didn't even do an official experiment :)

I took 2 cinnamon buns because they were the smallest of the bunch. Don't judge me! :)

A little yummy frosting on top and these were consumed with much haste.

Thank-you, Pioneer Woman, for this recipe. I love it and have had this recipe requested many times. Now that I have made a batch I will try not to make them again until Christmas. Or at least Thanksgiving. Okay, maybe Labor Day. Wait, that's in a few days. Yup, I can definitely wait until Labor Day :)

Oh, and what happened to the other half of the dough?

It continued to grow and prosper in its own way. Stay tuned for the adventures of the rest of the dough......

Non-stick Spray vs Butter & Flour

The Experiment: Does using non-stick spray instead of buttering & flouring a cake pan make a difference in the ability to remove the cake from the pan?

Inspiration: I follow Pioneer Woman's blog and her instructions in baking often include buttering and flouring pans but I'm a habitual non-stick spray user and never flour the pans. I wondered if I was getting worse results because of taking a shortcut.

Expected Results: I expected the process of buttering & flouring to be more time consuming than using the non-stick spray but I expected the results to be about the same.

Actual Results:

Butter Flavoured Pam is my non-stick spray of choice. Lucerne regular salted butter and Robin Hood all-purpose flour are my butter and flour choices.

On the left is the Pam'd pan. And on the right is the buttered and floured pan. I melted the butter and used a brush to spread it around the pan. Then I put a tablespoon of flour in the pan and shook it around to cover the interior. I had to do that a few times to fully cover the buttered surface.

I poured the cake batter into the pans. This is my "Canada Day Cake" recipe. Just looking at these pictures is making me drool :)

Time to bake the cakes....

Here you can see that there is a small difference to be seen in the pans. The one on the left is noticeably browner around the edges. It's almost as if the Pam fried the edges of the cake a little.

Here's a side view. You can see the browner edges. But here's the really shocking part, the shape is different.

The floured pan on the right rose more in the middle but the edges didn't rise much, resulting in a domed cake.

The Pam'd cake on the left seemed to rise evenly all around. There is some rising in the center but the edges rose too giving an interesting wavy but fairly even surface.

Time to take the cakes out of their pans. They both slid out easily with no sticking to the pan. The one on the left has no residue but the one on the right has a floury residue on it.

So which method is best? For convenience and clean results I'll be sticking with my non-stick spray. The floury residue is unappealing and is the real deterrent to using the butter and flour method. The convenience of using non-stick spray is just a bonus :)

Homemade Bagels from scratch

Instead of doing a "which is better" experiment this time I'm doing a "can I do it?" experiment.

The Experiment: Can an a foodiestudent who has only purchased bagels in the past make them from scratch?

Inspiration: I ran across a "real New York bagel" recipe on smittenkitchen's blog. The recipe was intimidating because it involves many steps and takes 2 days to make. But since the chances of me going to NY any time soon so I can experience a "real NY bagel" is pretty slim I thought I'd give it a try.

Expected Results: I expect the bagels will be edible but different from what I'm used to. They are supposed to be chewier and more dense than the bagels we are used to in local bakeries.

Actual Results: The first day involved making a "sponge" of flour, yeast, and water....
I was worried right from the start because after 2 hours the sponge was supposed to double in size as well as form bubbles. The bubbles were there but it didn't seem to grow in size at all. So I gave it another hour but it still looked the same. I contemplated chucking it out and starting over but after 3 hours of waiting time I didn't want to repeat the waiting time just to have the exact same thing happen again so I decided to soldier onward.

I added the other ingredients and kneaded and kneaded and kneaded as per the instructions. This was a very firm ball of dough that was a pain in the wrist to knead for so long. If you decide to make bagels from scratch I recommend going to the gym and doing some serious upper body training for a couple of months in advance LOL.

This recipe makes 12 giant bagels, 16 regular bagels, or 24 mini bagels. I opted for minis. The dough is resting here. Why is there a single electric beater sitting on the counter, you ask? What an excellent question, I respond. I needed to find a tool in my kitchen that I could use to start a hole in the bagel to give them their classic shape. It was surprisingly difficult to find a tool that would make a small but perfectly round hole. However, I came across the beater and found the plug-in end to be the perfect size, shape, and easy-clean material for the job.

Here is half the batch in their beautiful round form. Aren't those holes perfect? Thank-you electric beater :)

Before I could "retard" the bagels in the fridge overnight (let them rise slowly) I had to check to see if they were ready. This involved dropping one bagel in a bowl of cool water to make sure it would float within a few seconds. This one floated right away so I put it back with its brothers and they slept in the fridge overnight.

Good morning uncooked bagels! The sun is coming in the kitchen window and it's a beautiful day. The bagels rose a little overnight but they aren't explosive. However, for mini-bagels, they are bigger than I expected. If I made the 12 giant bagels they would have been scary-huge.

Yeah baby! This is the step that separates the real bagels from bagel-wannabe's. They were boiled 6 at a time in a baking soda-honey-water mixture.

I didn't take a picture of it but while the bagels were boiling I had a wee fire in my oven. It's a long story involving cake batter and a pan that was too small and a homeowner who forgot to clean up the mess before pre-heating her oven to 500. Luckily it burned itself out after a few minutes as we don't have a fire extinguisher and I was afraid to pour water on it just in case there was grease fueling the fire. I blew on it really hard and that seemed to help too :)

The finished bagels. The ones on the right were sprinkled with kosher salt. The ones on the left are plain.

The recipe instructions clearly state to let the bagels cool for 15 minutes before serving. I waited about 3 minutes and couldn't stand it anymore. This is one of the salted bagels with some light cream cheese. This bagel along with 2 of its brothers were consumed so quickly I think I broke some kind of bagel eating record.

The verdict is in and yes, Vicky can indeed make bagels. The ones with kosher salt are a little tastier than their plain counterparts although both are very enjoyable. They are definitely dense and chewy but no more so than some bagels I've had in the past. These are white (plain) bagels but they have the denseness of a typical whole wheat bagel available from local bakeries. They are chewy but only as much as you would expect from a bagel. I was worried the chewiness would be too much and be the downfall of the bagel but it wasn't even an issue. This experience was definitely a success.

I was asked the other day if I will take requests for food experiments. The answer is absolutely yes. If there is a food experiment you want me to try or a question you would like the answer to you can leave a comment or email me. I will do my best to respond to all requests.

Until then... happy kitchen experiments :)
foodiestudent

**edit: a loyal blog reader commented to me that bagels, given their shape, should not be referred to as brothers but instead as sisters. I see your point, loyal reader. I shall be sure to think more carefully about the sexual shapes the foods represent before assigning them a gender in future :) **

All Purpose vs Bread Flour

The Experiment: Does using bread flour instead of all purpose flour make a difference in homemade bread buns?

Inspiration: I make bread buns about every other weekend. For the last batch I noticed that the buns were quite dense. I enjoyed that when they were fresh out of the oven but the next day they weren't as enjoyable. I wished they were a little lighter. Some research done by my good friend Scott suggested that using bread flour instead of all purpose could make the buns lighter.

Expected Results: From the website ochef.com... "Bread flour is called for in many bread and pizza crust recipes where you want the loftiness or chewiness that the extra gluten provides." So it seems that in theory the bread flour will yield lighter bread buns.

Actual Results:
The titans go into battle. In the yellow corner we have the challenger, bread flour! And in the blue corner, the reigning champion, all-purpose flour!!!! *crowd goes wild*

The bread recipe starts with scalding a mixture of milk, vegetable oil, and sugar. As no flour is involved in this step I am starting off with everything in one pot.

And that brownie in a pie plate in the background... that became a "peanut butter brownie pie" :)

The milk-oil-sugar mixture has been separated into two bowls and one envelope of yeast added to each bowl.

Here the flour and other ingredients have been added to the mixture and it has been allowed to rise for an hour or so. Already I noticed a significant difference. The dough with all purpose flour was drier and stiffer than the dough with bread flour which was stickier and more moist. I carefully measured the flour and other dry ingredients so the difference in texture was quite surprising.

This is after a second rising. Although the bowls are not identical in size & shape I think it's safe to say that the bread flour dough (on the left) rose more than the AP flour dough.

Time to make the buns. I usually use another method to make buns but it's difficult to get consistently sized buns that way so I rolled out each batch of dough and used a biscuit cutter to get more consistency, which I hoped would make for better comparisons.

The difference between the amount each set rose can clearly be seen here. Just look at the space between the buns in the AP ones (right) compared to the bread flour ones on the left. You can see how much more they expanded with the bread flour.


And here's the final result. The bread flour buns look burned but please trust me that they weren't. They got a little darker on top than the AP buns on the right but the lighting his this pic makes it looks worse than it really was.

The buns were put through a highly scientific taste test with my brother, husband, and myself. The results were as follows...

Husband: the bread flour ones are a little saltier and lighter and just better.

Brother: the bread flour ones are a little sweeter and heavier but in a good way. The all purpose ones tasted bland. NOTE: brother ate this bun while it was warm and he said it may have tasted heavier than it really was because it was fresh out of the oven.

Me: the bread flour ones were definitely lighter and had a slightly crisper crust. They held their shape well, even while warm, without being heavy or "stodgy" inside.

Interesting that there were different opinions on the taste but in the end everyone preferred the bread flour batch over the all purpose flour batch.

So, in general, I would say that the bread flour yielded lighter results. The taste was preferred by all and I would recommend using bread flour for all homemade bread products. There is also whole wheat bread flour for healthier options.

FoodieStudent - an introduction

My name is Vicky Bennett and I am not a foodie. Phew! That was a tough confession to make. Actually not really. Most people who know me would not be surprised by that at all. Until about 6 months ago I lived on salads, frozen dinners, and fast food.

Then one day something miraculous happened.... I came across Pioneer Woman's website. PW single-handedly piqued my interest in making food from scratch. Her recipes are simple yet ambitious at the same time. The step by step pictures mean even microwave-only chefs (like me!) can attain her culinary heights. Once I started trying her recipes I was amazed at how my kitchen confidence grew and I was able to branch out to other recipe blogs and websites, although I will always stay true to PW and her initial inspiration. I still check her site on a daily basis.

The more I tried, the more I wanted to experiment. I wanted to see how close I had to follow recipes to the letter and which shortcuts I could take. For example, how important is sifting the flour when making a cake? Is buttering and flouring a pan any better than using non-stick spray? Does salt really enhance the flavour of chocolate and other sweets? For that matter, is kosher salt better than table salt?

This is the blog where I will research, experiment, and document the results of these wonderings.

To kick it off, here is a picture of a loaf of brioche I made during a food network monthly challenge in January 2009. I made it using the flour shown (Robin Hood's blend of white flour and wheat bran.... healthy like whole wheat but cooks and tastes like white flour). The results were less than satisfying. Brioche is supposed to be flaky like a croissant and it seems that for the right texture only white flour will do. This loaf was crusty and dense... still edible but not what I would call a success given the expected texture.

I couldn't end my first post with a culinary failure so here's a success. For a St. Patrick's Day buffet I made mini-cupcakes and some chocolate shapes with the leftover green and white chocolate. At the back are the two mini-cupcakes (that simply ooze with cuteness) and in the front from L to R are a shamrock, mug of green beer, and a green chocolate in the shape of a peanut butter cup. Not only did I eat all of the above by the handful but they were the first items to disappear from the buffet table. There is no greater compliment for a FoodieStudent like me :)

Thanks for reading my blog. Check back for a new post with my first official experiment soon!