While I'm still spending as much time as I can on the garden before the rain comes (please no, give me one more day...more compost needs to be spread, onions need to go in the ground. Please, please, pretty please!) I did have a chance (excuse) to do some baking this morning.
Actually, I started last night. Because it was a school morning, and I am not waking up at the crack of dawn to give a yeast dough enough time to rise for breakfast. But starting last night and letting it rise in the fridge, well that I can do. Once in a while.
I've actually made this before. The dough is based on the Brioche dough in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day with a few alterations (starting with making a lot less) and the technique is based on one I learned in one the the Avoca cookbooks. And by technique I mean that, unlike regular cinnamon rolls, I pressed 1/4 of the dough into the bottom of a spring form pan. This does two things. One - it keeps all the gooey stuff from getting stuck on the bottom of the pan and Two - all that gooey stuff caramelizes in the buttery dough on the bottom, which is a good thing.
Usually when I make these I go nuts on the filling, double what this calls for. And in that case you get a really gooey, sticky, wonderful cinnamon roll. Today I used a more conservative amount of filling because, well, really I was more in the mood for Brioche with some cinnamon roll filling than cinnamon rolls that taste a little of Brioche. So it's your call. Double the filling or leave it as is. I like it both ways. Evelyn seems to too as I caught her sneaking her second (and they were big) cinnamon roll when we came in from digging.
Brioche Cinnamon Rolls
3/4 cup lukewarm water
1 T yeast
1 T salt
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 sticks melted butter(reserve wrappers for greasing pans)
3 cups unbleached flour
Mix the water with the yeast, salt, eggs sugar and butter then work the flour in with a wooden spoon. It will be lumpy and sticky and ugly. Let it rest for either 3 hours or one hour and then in the fridge (covered with a tea towel) overnight.
In the morning preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cut roughly 1/4 of the dough off and press into the bottom of an oiled pan (how much dough exactly really depends on the size of your pan, I like my 9 inch spring form or a 9 inch pie pan)
Roll the remaining dough out into a large rectangle and spread with a mixture of
1/2 stick melted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 T cinnamon
1 T Pumpkin Pie Spice
Roll it up and slice into eight rolls. Space these out evenly on the bottom layer of dough in the pan, they will puff up in the oven so don't worry if there seems to be a lot of space between them.
Bake 25 minutes.
Sometimes I make a glaze for this but it doesn't really need it. Like I said, if you want them to be really sweet, make more filling. It occurred to be while I was rolling out the dough that this dough would make a good monkey bread. Not that I've made monkey bread before, but it seems like it would be a good fit. I mean brioche, cinnamon, butter, sugar, basically cinnamon rolls but in little stuck together ball form. Humm....