So much for my colleagues always wondering where I find the time to cook: the truth is that if you don't make time yourself for the things you love, no one will make it for you - and when you'll realise that you have slowly, inexplicably lost something precious, it'll be too late to take it back.
All this, to introduce today's recipe: both a great start to the past week, and the final fulfilment of a challenge I had avoided for more than one year after a first series of indisputable failures.
Apparently, brewer's yeast was no friend of mine until one week ago, as I had tried to use it many times before, and never seemed to figure out quite how it worked. Instead of soft and fluffy doughs, I got flat and despairingly hard focaccias, deformed rolls, unfulfilling breads...until I decided not to use dried yeast ever again, since even following recipes to the tiniest detail seemed not to be enough to guarantee success.
And then I discovered cinnamon rolls.
I had never seen one back in Italy, but here they're just everywhere. A temptation that's hard to resist, screaming "Eat me, please!" from every café counter...but also radiating Butter, so much Butter that I never really dared to treat myself to one.
It was quite surprising to find that the recipe doesn't involve as much Evil Butter as I feared, and it was with much less guilt feeling that I finally resolved to try them at home. But Problem Number Two lied in ambush, meaning that I had to choose between resuming my battle with brewer's yeast and risking another defeat, or giving up on the Cinnamon Challenge: you'll see for yourself what I went for (unsurprising, how could I resist?), and yes, I have won, so why are you not erecting a monument to Queen Baker NOW?
Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients for the dough (about 10-12 rolls):
- 125ml skimmed milk;
- 25g butter or spread;
- 260g flour;
- 50g plain sugar;
- 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon;
- 1 egg;
- 1 sachet dried yeast;
- 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Ingredients for the filling:
- 90g brown sugar;
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon;
- 30 g butter, softened.
Recipe:
- Start preparing the dough: melt the butter in a saucepan, together with the milk, taking care of not bringing to the boil. Pour the mixture in a bowl, and add all the sugar, cinnamon, egg, yeast and salt, and 70g flour.
- Knead thoroughly for about 3-5 minutes, then add the remaining 190g, and continue kneading until you have used up all the flour. Of course, feel free to add more of it if the batter is too sticky.
- Knead for 10 more minutes on a clean surface (on which you will have previously spread a little flour), until the dough is smooth and elastic. Finally, put it in a bowl greased with a little oil, cover it with cling film and a cloth, and leave aside to raise for about 2 hours, or until it becomes twice its size.
- Prepare the filling, mixing brown sugar with cinnamon, and softening the butter until it is creamy enough to be spreadable - but not completely melted.
- Two hours later...get back to the dough: spread it evenly on the floured kitchen top, in a rectangular shape, about 14x19cm big. Spread the butter on the surface, leaving 1cm "empty" border on each side, and then pour the cinnamon and sugar mixture evenly on the buttery area.
- Roll up the dough, starting from its long side, and pressing gently with your hands to keep it tight.
- Keeping the sealed side down, cut the roll in 10-12 slices of the same size, about 1.5-2cm thick. Put them in an oven dish, greased with butter or lined with baking paper.
- Once again, cover the oven dish with cling film and a cloth, and leave aside for about 45 minutes, until the rolls have become twice their size.
- Last but not least...pre-heat the oven to 190°, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the rolls from the oven dish as soon as they're ready, and put them on a grill, leaving aside to cool for about 10 minutes.
To my experience, you can store them for about 3 days in a hermetic box; to be honest, I would have tasted one immediately - and I suspect that they would have tasted much better when still warm -, hadn't it been Saturday evening and almost dinner time. They were excellent the morning after, though, and still delicious on Monday and Tuesday, when I brought them to work for breakfast.
In your face, brewer's yeast! I'm so excited about this success, that I'm making homemade pizza tonight...so please, don't let me down, will you?
