I made a 9x12 pan of cinnamon buns and I've got a problem.  I have made this recipe several times, and the buns taste Great!  In making them the dough feels great, it rises nicely, the buns roll out and cut just fine, and after the second rise they look simply awesome!  Even when they come out of the oven they look (and smell) wonderful.  However, as they cool, the center two buns "fall".  I make 12 buns in my 9x12 metal cake pan (3 rows of 4 buns).  The outer buns stay nice and tall on the side next to the pan wall, but slope toward the center of the pan.  The center two buns are maybe half the height of the outer edge, and maybe half as tall as they were when they came out of the oven.

I suspect my problem has to do with oven temperature and time, but I follow the recipe I have religiously (375' oven; 18-20 minutes).  After 20 minutes the buns are quite brown on top, and I would hesitate to leave them in longer as I fear they would become too dark.  Any suggestions???

Slicing filled, rolled dough into slices for buns (cinnamon buns) - how do you do it? I have tried dental floss, fishing line, and knives - serrated and straight.

None of them seem to give satisfactory results. They seem to grip the dough and pull at it, or squash it, rather than slice smoothly.

Thanks :)

My mom had a special request for cinnamon rolls for her birthday so I'd like to thank zolablue for the recipe here (It's the second recipe down the list):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/cinnamonrolls

I'm another happy customer!

I'm mostly posting as a thank you but also with some of my personal experiences that others might benefit from reading about if they choose to make these WONDERFUL and EASY rolls:

1) I used 6g instant yeast instead of a packet (7g) of active dry.  Therefore I added an extra half cup of potato liquid to the recipe because I didn't have to disolve the yeast in the beginning.

2) I used lard instead of shortening.  I don't know if this is the reason that when I added in the eggs, milk, potato, and potato liquid, it came together with rather a curdled look.  I did add the eggs one at a time and when the first one did not mix in smoothly, I broke out the electric beater.  The concern was all for naught, though since once I added the flour everything came together beautifully - So don't worry if you get this curdled looking texture beforehand.

3) I used KA organic AP flour and it took 5 cups to create a workable dough, though I may have been able to get away with even less flour.

4) I couldn't find cinnamon chips at the grocery store so I just spread the sugar out on the buttered rolled out dough and sprinkled the whole thing with as much ground cinnamon as I thought would be desirable - A complete but thin layer.

5) I got 14 pieces out of the roll and packed them into a 9 1/2" x 13 1/2" nonstick metal baking pan that I had sprayed with coooking spray.

6) I made vanilla icing and did not use the full amount of milk since I was leaving out the chocolate and it would have been too watery.

I know that it looks like I went crazy with the icing (I actually did have some left over!) but once the roll was on my plate it looked perfect!

Summer

- What's a portuguese roll?
- Ohhhhhhhh, it's verrrrrrrry good.

So said Michael Stern during the April 4th episode of The Splendid Table.

They're mildly sweet with a touch of honey but don't taste "eggy" or like cake. The dough is a joy to work with and makes your kitchen smell wonderful as the buns are baking. I enjoy having them lightly toasted with a bit of jam, or just plain. I've heard they make excellent french toast, pulled pork sandwiches, or bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches too. They're simply excellent - in fact, someone told me it was even his/her new favourite bread.

These have been a huge hit among other Fresh Loafers and I couldn't agree more. :D

Thanks for sharing this recipe, Mark!

The rest of the post is here.

I have been playing aroud a lot with a standard white loaf recipe from my grandmother. So this just another experiment to see how far I can take the basic dough. Was up at 5.30 am, so decided it would be buns for a late breakfast.

Full post on my pathetic blog

Time For Cinnamon Buns

 

Traditional Russian Mennonite Buns

These buns aren't just buns, they are a history lesson and a sociology study wrapped into a tasty tasty snack.  This bun recipe has been in my family for a long long time, possibly since the late 19th century.  In any case, my grandmother made them back in Molotschna, my mom makes them and so do I.  These buns are really general purpose buns, but particularly appropriate for Sunday afternoon early supper (Vaspa), or served after funerals, in a church basement, with cheese and coffee.  What makes them a bit different than what we usually see on the Fresh Loaf is that they contain a lot of fat, in this case lard, and they are shaped with a sort of "extrusion" technique.  

The lard content is an honest byproduct of the heritage of the buns. Mennonites (and of course lots of other folks) were in the past  a primarily agrarian people, and raising pigs was a big part of farm life.  Butchering and rendering produced lard, which was an important and primary source of fat.  Lard was used in day-to-day baking, long before the advent of "shortening" and other manufactured fats.  Lard has gotten a bad name in the recent past, but is now making a bit of a comeback because its healthier than previously proclaimed (by the margarine/shortening cabal).    In any case, these buns contain a fair bit of lard, in an honest, farmyardish sort of way.

The buns also contain a fair bit of sugar, which speeds the rising.  I appreciate that sugar and fast rising is anathema to some, but really its a practical way of making a buns much quicker, which is an important consideration when cooking on a busy farm or household. Besides, the buns taste great. 

The mystery ingredient is vinegar.  I really have no idea why there is vinegar in the recipe, but there is and I use it. Anyone care to hazard a guess?

The buns are shaped by extruding them between your thumb and forefinger and then being pinched off.  I haven't seen the extrusion shaping technique described (I haven't looked hard either), my Mom taught me how to do this and it works pretty well.  The pictures below and the description will hopefully inspire you to try it out. 

Here's the recipe

Mix: 

 1 cup Lard Try to get a non-hydrogentated lard, not all lards are equal. 

4 cups hot water.

The hot water softens the lard.

Add:

2 teaspoons Salt

1/2 cup Sugar

1 tablespoon Vinegar

4 Cups Flour

Stir vigourously until you get a nice sponge going. Because of the hot water used in stage one, the sponge will be warm.  If its hot, then let it cool down a bit before the next step.

 Add:

1 Tablespoon instant yeast (this may be the "non-traditional" part of the recipe, but it works well)

Gradually add in:

About 4 more cups of flour

At this stage you should have a fairly moist rough dough. you may have to add more flour if its too sticky. Go by what feels right, that's my Oma's way of baking.

 

Turn out on a well floured surface and start kneading, adding flour as required, about 15 minutes.

Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 to 45 minutes. (There is a lot of yeast and sugar in this dough, so it doesn't take long)

The Shaping Technique

Here's the interesting part, this shaping technique takes a bit of practice, but once you get the idea you can shape buns fairly quickly.

To shape the buns, tear or cut out a section of the dough and grab with your left hand.

Make an open circle with your left thumb and forefinger, then push the dough through circle with your right hand, from underneath.

 The dough should be stretched through. 

Now pinch off the bulging dough ball with your left hand thumb and forefinger, and place the resulting ball of dough on a baking sheet.

 

Cover and let the buns rise until doubled, about 30 to 45 minutes, perhaps a bit longer. 

They should look very light and not spring back when depressed.

Bake in a 400F oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until nice and brown on top. 

 

Mmmm, these are good buns.  Slather on the butter and clover honey from the canadian praries, and it's just about the best thing you've ever had.

Bake on!

 

 

This is what I pulled out of my oven today, a good 2kg of dough worth. First a small batch of light rye rolls made somewhat according to the instructions for making sourdough italian bread that was posted here earlier by Dmsnyder i think. The formula does only call for white flour but as I live in sweden I find that breads should contain at least a small portion of rye!

I made the dough with 20% rye flour wich gives you a dough that handles exactly like a wheat dough but with greater taste and also a somewhat drier feel, due to the high ash content of my whole grain rye flour, I also topped them with a mixture of wheat bran and rolled oats so they resemble the kind of "fake healthy" bread you can buy in stores and bakeries here in sweden.

The other breads were two sunflower ryes as per BBA, made with 30%rye starter and really coarse rye meal for the rye content in the dough. Lightly toasted sunflower seeds make for a lovely taste, can´t wait to open these babies! I have started tt get a bit better at shaping since I studied Marks videos, that technique is far superior to my prevoius attempts. Now I only have to make room for the loaves in my freezer! '

Looking for old recipe for a sweet bun called "Haystacks." They were plain, sweet, yeasty, yellowish (like an egg dough) and shaped like a rounded haystack with a plain confectioner's sugar icing and toasted coconut sprinkled on top. They were bigger than a hot cross bun and smaller than a hard roll. They were not heavy or doughy and had only a dinner roll type crust. We would buy them back in the 1950's in a bakery in Bridgeport, CT for Sunday breakfast. There were a lot of different ethnic bakeries there so they might be based on some sort of braided European bread.

I can still smell the inside of that bakery and remember my fascination with the bread slicing machine! Anyhelp would be wonderful - S

We're completely distracted these days by our vegetarian burgers. The other day we decided to make them again, using 3 different kinds of beans: black, kidney and garbanzo.

We were going to serve them with pita that we planned to bake on the barbecue. We had toyed with the idea of shaping the discs early and letting them rise a little before baking and then I suddenly decided we nnnneeeeeeeded to have real hamburger buns and that we could bake them on the stone in the barbecue (as per GrapevineTX's post "Outdoor bread baking, gas grill and attempt #1".

The hamburger buns (or if you prefer: "shamburger" buns) were made with pita dough (all-purpose & whole wheat flours, oil and a little brown sugar) and baked in our gas barbecue.

Here's how we did the baking in the Barbecue: After the buns have been shaped and risen, we put them over direct heat for about 8 minutes, turning them once to account for uneven heat in the barbecue. Then moved them over to cook with indirect heat until they were done (about another 8 minutes)... (our gas barbecue can be turned off on one side).

You can see why we keep getting distracted into making burgers, can't you? And as long as it's barbecue weather, we really can't stop....

• recipe for hamburger buns made with pita dough and baked on the barbecue
• recipe for vegetarian burgers

(February 2009: edited to add an anchor for the baking method. -Elizabeth)

The other day when I made these hamburger buns, based on Susan's (Wild Yeast) recipe for soft hamburger rolls.

What excellent hamburger buns!!