sticky buns

Until fairly recently, Drew and I had a pretty strict division of baking labor.  If it contained yeast, it was Drew's domain.  It not, then it was mine.  He makes the bread, and I make the cookies, cupcakes, well, you get the general idea.  But then a couple months ago, I decided that I wanted to make cinnamon rolls, so now I've gone and muddied the division of baking labor.

Some people are intimidated by yeast, but working with it isn't so bad.  With some practice, you get the hang of it.  Homemade cinnamon rolls are actually quite easy to make and the results are far superior than (most) anything you'll find in a store.

Last weekend, I made Flour's Famous Sticky Buns.  Flour is a bakery in Boston, and I saw the baker, Joanne Chang, on an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network.  The "goo" (basically a caramel) makes these buns sickenly sweet.  The cinnamon rolls are actually a brioche, which required tons of butter and a ridiculous amount of kneading in the stand mixer.  

If ever you try out a recipe from the internet, it pays to take the time to scroll through the first few pages of the comments.  I certainly wish I would have done this before beginning, instead of halfway through.  Then I would have learned that I should have omitted the water in the goo (it makes it too runny).  However, scrolling through the comments was useful because I learned that the recipe mistakenly calls for 6 eggs instead of 5.  I also learned that instead of using half the brioche dough as the recipe instructs, I should just use it all.  

Anyway, the buns were really good, but I think I actually prefer the Cinnamon Sticky Buns from Simply Recipes.