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Feb. 8th, 2009 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSticky buns: Ingredients and procedurals so that you can Try This At Home
2 c. boiling water
1/2 c. sugar
1 T salt (yes, a tablespoon)
2 T shortening (butter is fine)
1/4 c. lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 beaten eggs
8 c. flour (measure this by scooping forkfuls of flour into the cup measure and scraping off the top like you're supposed to do for flour. DO NOT dip the damn cup measure into the flour bag. That is WRONG. Be glad I don't make you sift it.)
2 cakes or packets yeast, NOT THE QUICK RISE KIND. Get the normal kind.
You will also need about 1 large bag (pound? 12 oz? The big bag.) of shelled walnut pieces
1 whole bag soft light brown sugar
about two sticks butter, soft and room temperature. Maybe more. Set out three sticks. You can re-fridge what you don't use.
a lot of ground cinnamon, in shakeable container
These items are not used in measured quantities so, y'know, I can only ballpark it.
For your mise, you will also need a big, flat surface, parchment paper, some extra flour for rolling out with, a rolling pin, three round layer-cake pans, and a large bowl for mixing the dough and to let it rise up in. Eight cups of flour is a lot, it gets kind of big, there.
1. Mix boiling water with 1/2 cup sugar, 1 T salt, 2 T shortening, cool until lukewarm. Stir so that the sugar all dissolves.
2. Meanwhile, soften yeast in the lukewarm water, add the 1 teaspoon sugar, and set it aside to proof.
3. Once the boiling water mixture is cooled and the yeast is proofed, mix the two. Add the two beaten eggs. Stir in flour. You will have to use your hands and knead and stuff to get all the flour mixed in. This is OK.
4. Form dough into a ball in the bottom of the bowl. Lightly grease the ball of dough, cover it with a towel, and let it rise up until it's big. (Depending on your room temperature, this will take an hour or two.) In the "large mixing bowl" it gets big enough to push up the towel in the center. (This is not a normal size mixing bowl. It's a big one, wider at the top, like for bread. Some of you will know what bowl I mean. Some of you will not. Do the best you can, here.)
5. While the dough is going like all the little angels (wear your lilac on the 25th of May!), you prep the pans. The pans are prepped with butter, brown sugar, and walnuts.
If you do not know what you are doing, and you will not know for the first go-round, you take the butter. You cut the butter into slices a little thinner than a tablespoon. Cut each slice into four pieces. Then put about twelve pieces of butter in the bottom of each pan. Spread 'em out a bit.
Then you take the brown sugar, from the bag. Use your hand. It takes a handful and a half (or thereabouts) for each pan. Crumble the brown sugar around on the bottom of the pan. You want pretty good coverage. It doesn't have to be thick enough to make a layer. You can have see-through in some spots. However, handful and a half should do you. Generous handfuls are better than weenie ones.
Then you take the walnuts. You'll be using about 3/4 of the bag of walnuts spread over the three pans. If you want 'em smaller than they come, chop first. Me, I love me some walnuts so bigger pieces are better. Sprinkle the walnuts around the bottom of the pan. You want fairly good coverage, here, unless you're some kind of fascist who does not like brown-sugar-and-butter-baked-walnuts, in which case you probably want fewer walnuts. If you omit the walnuts, I do not want to know about it.
When the pans are prepped, you can set them aside.
6. When the dough has risen up sufficiently, punch it down, divide it into three equal lumps.
7. Roll one lump out into a pretty big square. It will not roll easily. It will shrink back at you. Keep at it. The dough should roll out to be better than a foot and a half on each side.
7A. When the dough is rolled out as rolled out as you can get it (and, to a point, thinner is better), then you take the butter. Hold the butter in your hand and soften it. Then use your hand to smear a layer of butter on the dough surface. You do not need a ton of butter, here. Just make a thin layer where you can easily see the dough through the butter. Make the layer even. (My family has traditionally used a fucking butter knife to spread the butter on the dough. NO. That is stupid and needlessly time consuming and a royal fucking pain in the ass. My family has also tried melting the butter and using a pastry brush to spread the liquid butter on the dough. That's also unsatisfactory because the milk solids seperate out. The way to do this is to soften the fucking butter in your fucking hand and then smear it on the dough with the aforementioned hand. Your hand will work fan-fucking-tastically and is a lot more ergonomic than using a thrice-damned butter knife. Use your hand. For realz.)
7B. Next, sugar the dough. Take a handful of brown sugar and crumble it over the dough. Use the flat of your hand to spread it out, gently. The sugar should roll under your palm into a layer of fairly even thinness as it sticks to the butter. Go for good covereage and an even color but you should TOTALLY be able to see the dough under the sugar.
7C. Finally, cinnamon the dough. Shake cinnamon over the dough like you were making cinnamon toast or something. You want an even, pretty good coverage, but not too thick.
7D. Roll the dough up, starting at the end nearest you. If you didn't do the best job in the world on the rolling, you can stretch the dough towards you (lift up the roll a bit to free it from the counter, then pull it towards you a bit, then roll) as you roll it, which will thin it out nicely. When rolling, work your way left to right and then right to left and so forth. It gets easier about halfway through.
7F. When it's all rolled up, fold the dough snake into a U-shape. Cut the U in the middle. (You are going to make slices, bigger than an inch but certainly not bigger than two, out of the dough snake.) Cut each piece in half for four pieces. Then cut each of those pieces in half once and then again so that you have sixteen pieces total.
7G. Arrange the fifteen pieces (You get to eat the smallest, most pathetic looking one unless you have some sort of issue with eating dough what contains raw eggs. You will, however, be missing out. The dough is good.) in the round tin. Usually I put an outer edge of ten around the circumference and then five in the middle in a pattern like the five spots on a die. I have some OCD issues.
8. Repeat all parts of step 7 for the other two balls of dough.
9. Cover these tins with towels and let 'em rise up. They should be at least double before you bake 'em. The butter and brown sugar in them will get melty in the center of each roll. Try to resist the urge to eat it.
10. Preheat oven to somewhere between 350 and 375. Cook pans for somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes. The surfaces of the rolls will be a nice medium brown and there will be lots of bubbling up of the sauce in the pan.
11. While the rolls are cooking, you should lay out big sheets of parchment paper on your heat-safe countertop and get a not-sharp knife close to hand.
12. Remove the pans when the rolls are done, quickly run the knife around the perimeter of each pan. Then, invert the pan over the parchment paper so that the rolls land on the parchment paper and the topping (including the luscious baked walnuts) falls on to the rolls. (You kind of flop the pan face down, you don't flip it over IN THE AIR and shake it or anything. Flop the pan face down and then carefully lift up the pan with a jiggly motion so that the rolls fall out in an attractive circle.) Immediately run water in the pan in a futile effort to keep the topping gunk from forming a semi-permanent crust on your pan.
While the rolls are cooling, get the dull knife and scrape up the puddles of sauce/nuts that have fallen round the edge of the rolls. Eat that stuff. It will stick your teeth together and burn your mouth if you're greedy. You may also pick the occasional nut off and pretend that you didn't.
Rolls are good for several days if stored in an airtight container. They are particularly stellar if heated in the microwave for fifteen seconds before being eaten.
2 c. boiling water
1/2 c. sugar
1 T salt (yes, a tablespoon)
2 T shortening (butter is fine)
1/4 c. lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 beaten eggs
8 c. flour (measure this by scooping forkfuls of flour into the cup measure and scraping off the top like you're supposed to do for flour. DO NOT dip the damn cup measure into the flour bag. That is WRONG. Be glad I don't make you sift it.)
2 cakes or packets yeast, NOT THE QUICK RISE KIND. Get the normal kind.
You will also need about 1 large bag (pound? 12 oz? The big bag.) of shelled walnut pieces
1 whole bag soft light brown sugar
about two sticks butter, soft and room temperature. Maybe more. Set out three sticks. You can re-fridge what you don't use.
a lot of ground cinnamon, in shakeable container
These items are not used in measured quantities so, y'know, I can only ballpark it.
For your mise, you will also need a big, flat surface, parchment paper, some extra flour for rolling out with, a rolling pin, three round layer-cake pans, and a large bowl for mixing the dough and to let it rise up in. Eight cups of flour is a lot, it gets kind of big, there.
1. Mix boiling water with 1/2 cup sugar, 1 T salt, 2 T shortening, cool until lukewarm. Stir so that the sugar all dissolves.
2. Meanwhile, soften yeast in the lukewarm water, add the 1 teaspoon sugar, and set it aside to proof.
3. Once the boiling water mixture is cooled and the yeast is proofed, mix the two. Add the two beaten eggs. Stir in flour. You will have to use your hands and knead and stuff to get all the flour mixed in. This is OK.
4. Form dough into a ball in the bottom of the bowl. Lightly grease the ball of dough, cover it with a towel, and let it rise up until it's big. (Depending on your room temperature, this will take an hour or two.) In the "large mixing bowl" it gets big enough to push up the towel in the center. (This is not a normal size mixing bowl. It's a big one, wider at the top, like for bread. Some of you will know what bowl I mean. Some of you will not. Do the best you can, here.)
5. While the dough is going like all the little angels (wear your lilac on the 25th of May!), you prep the pans. The pans are prepped with butter, brown sugar, and walnuts.
If you do not know what you are doing, and you will not know for the first go-round, you take the butter. You cut the butter into slices a little thinner than a tablespoon. Cut each slice into four pieces. Then put about twelve pieces of butter in the bottom of each pan. Spread 'em out a bit.
Then you take the brown sugar, from the bag. Use your hand. It takes a handful and a half (or thereabouts) for each pan. Crumble the brown sugar around on the bottom of the pan. You want pretty good coverage. It doesn't have to be thick enough to make a layer. You can have see-through in some spots. However, handful and a half should do you. Generous handfuls are better than weenie ones.
Then you take the walnuts. You'll be using about 3/4 of the bag of walnuts spread over the three pans. If you want 'em smaller than they come, chop first. Me, I love me some walnuts so bigger pieces are better. Sprinkle the walnuts around the bottom of the pan. You want fairly good coverage, here, unless you're some kind of fascist who does not like brown-sugar-and-butter-baked-walnuts, in which case you probably want fewer walnuts. If you omit the walnuts, I do not want to know about it.
When the pans are prepped, you can set them aside.
6. When the dough has risen up sufficiently, punch it down, divide it into three equal lumps.
7. Roll one lump out into a pretty big square. It will not roll easily. It will shrink back at you. Keep at it. The dough should roll out to be better than a foot and a half on each side.
7A. When the dough is rolled out as rolled out as you can get it (and, to a point, thinner is better), then you take the butter. Hold the butter in your hand and soften it. Then use your hand to smear a layer of butter on the dough surface. You do not need a ton of butter, here. Just make a thin layer where you can easily see the dough through the butter. Make the layer even. (My family has traditionally used a fucking butter knife to spread the butter on the dough. NO. That is stupid and needlessly time consuming and a royal fucking pain in the ass. My family has also tried melting the butter and using a pastry brush to spread the liquid butter on the dough. That's also unsatisfactory because the milk solids seperate out. The way to do this is to soften the fucking butter in your fucking hand and then smear it on the dough with the aforementioned hand. Your hand will work fan-fucking-tastically and is a lot more ergonomic than using a thrice-damned butter knife. Use your hand. For realz.)
7B. Next, sugar the dough. Take a handful of brown sugar and crumble it over the dough. Use the flat of your hand to spread it out, gently. The sugar should roll under your palm into a layer of fairly even thinness as it sticks to the butter. Go for good covereage and an even color but you should TOTALLY be able to see the dough under the sugar.
7C. Finally, cinnamon the dough. Shake cinnamon over the dough like you were making cinnamon toast or something. You want an even, pretty good coverage, but not too thick.
7D. Roll the dough up, starting at the end nearest you. If you didn't do the best job in the world on the rolling, you can stretch the dough towards you (lift up the roll a bit to free it from the counter, then pull it towards you a bit, then roll) as you roll it, which will thin it out nicely. When rolling, work your way left to right and then right to left and so forth. It gets easier about halfway through.
7F. When it's all rolled up, fold the dough snake into a U-shape. Cut the U in the middle. (You are going to make slices, bigger than an inch but certainly not bigger than two, out of the dough snake.) Cut each piece in half for four pieces. Then cut each of those pieces in half once and then again so that you have sixteen pieces total.
7G. Arrange the fifteen pieces (You get to eat the smallest, most pathetic looking one unless you have some sort of issue with eating dough what contains raw eggs. You will, however, be missing out. The dough is good.) in the round tin. Usually I put an outer edge of ten around the circumference and then five in the middle in a pattern like the five spots on a die. I have some OCD issues.
8. Repeat all parts of step 7 for the other two balls of dough.
9. Cover these tins with towels and let 'em rise up. They should be at least double before you bake 'em. The butter and brown sugar in them will get melty in the center of each roll. Try to resist the urge to eat it.
10. Preheat oven to somewhere between 350 and 375. Cook pans for somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes. The surfaces of the rolls will be a nice medium brown and there will be lots of bubbling up of the sauce in the pan.
11. While the rolls are cooking, you should lay out big sheets of parchment paper on your heat-safe countertop and get a not-sharp knife close to hand.
12. Remove the pans when the rolls are done, quickly run the knife around the perimeter of each pan. Then, invert the pan over the parchment paper so that the rolls land on the parchment paper and the topping (including the luscious baked walnuts) falls on to the rolls. (You kind of flop the pan face down, you don't flip it over IN THE AIR and shake it or anything. Flop the pan face down and then carefully lift up the pan with a jiggly motion so that the rolls fall out in an attractive circle.) Immediately run water in the pan in a futile effort to keep the topping gunk from forming a semi-permanent crust on your pan.
While the rolls are cooling, get the dull knife and scrape up the puddles of sauce/nuts that have fallen round the edge of the rolls. Eat that stuff. It will stick your teeth together and burn your mouth if you're greedy. You may also pick the occasional nut off and pretend that you didn't.
Rolls are good for several days if stored in an airtight container. They are particularly stellar if heated in the microwave for fifteen seconds before being eaten.
