Epicurious 4 levels series — Episode 15: Cinnamon rolls

[BakerAunt]

It's an interesting recipe that uses a technique--adding baking powder--that King Arthur also uses upon occasion. I do not understand the supposedly health conscious fascination with coconut sugar or coconut whatever.

I've made the cinnamon rolls in the King Arthur Wholegrain Baking Book and substituted some oil for the butter (except in the frosting), and it is still a favorite recipe with my husband. I find the texture slightly dense, but the filling and a bit of frosting make up for it.

I also have an oat maple roll recipe that I got from a Pillsbury booklet years ago. It has only a token amount of oats, but I've subbed in some brown sugar. It also did well with an oil substitution.

I've suddenly developed an urge to bake cinnamon rolls. I need to be able to bake something for my husband's family reunion. We are staying at a place with a kitchen, and these occasions seem to bring out a kind of culinary one-upmanship, or at least focus on the recipes of one family that bring out its memories. His cousins are all into butter. (One told me that I should forget about the dietary changes and just take the cholesterol lowering drug.) They also appear to be whole wheat flour adverse--and some people do taste it as bitter--but I have worked in white whole wheat flour as well as barley or oats and no one noticed. (They do make their feelings known.) There will be fourteen of us at some meals, so I will need at least 16 rolls, and I'll need to be able to park the shaped sweet rolls overnight in the refrigerator.

I have the "Snails" recipe from the mother of one of the families. I can tweak it for less butter. It had no filling with it, so I would need to look at fillings.

I will experiment tonight--while my younger stepson is still here to eat some of what I produce. It won't be Level 1--because Level 1 seems to require copious amounts of butter--but I will NOT be using pizza dough. (Couldn't the Level 3 baker have just bought prepared bread dough?)

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I would assume a level 3 (eg, professional) baker would do virtually everything from scratch.

[skeptic7]

Perhaps you could use a challah bread recipe for the base as that is oil based, and just have a little glaze without any butter at all.

[aaronatthedoublef]

In Bread Baker's Apprentice Peter Reinhart uses brioche so an enriched bread like challah with oil would work. You could also vary the eggs in it based your doctor's advise about them.

I used to make a white bread that was a challah recipe without eggs. Have to find that again.

[BakerAunt]

Eggs are not an issue. An egg has 1 1/2-2g saturated fat--depending on whom you believe--but it also has important nutrients, which, alas, butter does not. So, I don't worry about them in my baking. Butter and cream cheese are bigger problems. I've used oil successfully in yeasted sweet bread, so it should work with the right recipe. Adding some buttermilk also helps taste and texture.

[Mike Nolan]

There are a number of recipes out there for a vegan challah, no butter, milk, or eggs.

[BakerAunt]

I just googled challah cinnamon rolls, and as Mike notes, there are a number of recipes.

I have a wonderful challah recipe gifted to me by Cass. Converting it into cinnamon rolls would take some experimentation in terms of the filling and baking time. With the reunion fast approaching, and a need to lock in what I'm going to bake--I probably only have time for a single experiment.

Last year, I also made a delicious braided 6-strand(!) pumpkin loaf from a KAF recipe and used oil in the dough. That might make for a nice holiday sweet roll with a cinnamon-brown sugar filling and the candied ginger omitted. Here's the link: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/ginger-pumpkin-braid-recipe

This discussion is helping a lot!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Most challah recipes are vegan, or pareve. That way it can be eaten with dairy or meat products. I only have one challah recipe (and I have A LOT) that uses butter as a substitute for oil.

I also prefer honey to sugar and I replace some of the water with apple cider. It's still not overly sweet and the loaves with honey seem to have a longer shelf life than those with sugar.

[skeptic7]

I once did a pumpkin cinnamon roll from KA flour with candied ginger. I haven't repeated it but it turned out very nicely. I found pumpkin - whole wheat breads are useful to feed to people who think they don't like whole wheat, they assume the color and the different taste is due to the pumpkin.
I didn't know that challah recipes came eggless, I thought the definition was an oil-egg yeast bread without any dairy.

[BakerAunt]

I've decided to see if I can do a rift on a maple breakfast sweet roll. Details will be forthcoming in the baking thread.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't understand the allure of coconut sugar. It has a glycemic index of 54 (one source says 30), compare to 60 for table sugar, so it is a little better. I can't find a sweetness index for it but it is not as sweet as table sugar. (One source estimated it has 75% of the sweetness of table sugar.) It also costs somewhere around 3X what table sugar costs.

The inulin and minerals in it might have some minor benefits.

[BakerAunt]

The Level 2 baker in the video could have become a level 1 baker if she had had these instructions for making her own Chocolate Hazelnut Spread:

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/preparation/homemade-nutella?cid=433697&did=433697-20190921&mid=24719509428&utm_campaign=rs-daily-recipe_newsletter&utm_content=092119&utm_medium=email&utm_source=realsimple.com

[Mike Nolan]

I won't buy Nutella in America, because it's mostly corn syrup. The Nutella we had in Italy was superb!

[skeptic7]

The nutella recipe looks wonderful.

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