Loaf 79 – Tassajara Cinnamon Rolls
“The List” for my 100 Loaves project includes Cinnamon Rolls, which I haven’t tried yet. My friends Tom and Paula gave me the Tassajara bread book as a gift, and it has a great recipe for cinnamon rolls in it. It starts with their yeasted breakfast bread dough as the basis.
The Tessajara breads are all done in a day – unlike the Reinhart breads which do their initial rise in the fridge overnight. This is a bit of a problem for breakfast rolls, unless you’re willing to get up at 4am to get started. I wasn’t. I baked this batch during the day, and we had them for dessert, breakfast and breakfast. They keep well covered with Saran Wrap in the fridge.
This is an enriched dough, with milk, honey, egg and butter added to the usual flour, yeast, water and salt. The first step is to make a poolish of the milk, yeast, honey, egg and flour. This makes a thick batter that rises for about half an hour to get the yeast activated. During that half hour it goes from something resembling pancake batter to an airy thicker mass.
Poolish of yeast, milk, flour and honey after half an hour of rest.
After that, , salt, melted butter and more flour are mixed in.
More flour, plus salt and butter, added to poolish.
The dough is then kneaded for about 8 to 10 minutes into a smooth dough and left to rise in a warm place for about an hour.
After 45 minutes of rise time in a warm oven (85 degrees).
The risen dough is then rolled out into a rectangle, painted with butter, layered with brown sugar and cinnamon, rolled up and sliced. The sliced rolls then get another 20 minute rest to begin rising.
Quite a bit of growth during a 20 minute rest before baking.
Right before baking they get an egg wash to create a brown crust, then 20 minutes in the oven. During this time the house starts to smell amazing!
The glaze on top is just powdered sugar and a tiny amount of milk – I always thought glazes were more complex than that. I let the rolls cool a bit before drizzling the glaze on, and I left a couple without the glaze just to see what the base roll tasted like.
Finished cinnamon rolls; they taste as good as they look.
These rolls are a big winner. The flavor is wonderful, and they fill the house with an incredible smell. We had them for dessert the day I baked them and for breakfast the next morning. They keep in the fridge for a few days with Saran Wrap over them and heat up fine in a toaster oven. Yum.
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- Poolish of yeast, milk, flour and honey after half an hour of rest.
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- More flour, plus salt and butter, added to poolish.
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- A smooth dough after about 8 minutes of kneading.
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- After 45 minutes of rise time in a warm oven (85 degrees).
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- Dough rolled out and painted with butter.
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- Brown sugar and cinnamon added on.
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- Rolled up.
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- Sliced and distributed on baking pan.
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- Quite a bit of growth during a 20 minute rest before baking.
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- Fresh out of the oven, and a lot bigger. The house smells great!
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- Drizzled with topping (except for two).
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- Finished cinnamon rolls; they taste as good as they look.