Sticky Buns
Ingredients
- Brioche Dough:
- 69 g Flour (Strong Bread)
- 63 g Flour (Plain)
- 6 g yeast
- 1/2 t salt
- 1.5 T ice water
- 1 egg
- 62 g butter (cut into chunks and softened)
- Goo:
- 45 g butter
- 85 g Sugar (Brown)
- 28 g honey
- 1.5 T cream
- 1.5 T water
- Filling:
- 88 g Sugar (Brown)
- 1 t ground cinnamon
- 20 g pecans (toasted and chopped)
Method
To make this for dessert (a few hours after dinner), follow the timeline given. To make it for a different time of day, shift the times appropriately.
The day before you want to consume these buns,
in the afternoon or evening:
Start the dough: In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for the dough, except the butter, and beat on low (will probably need dough hooks) until it comes together enough to knead by hand. Then knead by hand for about ten minutes. (Or you can beat it in a mixer the whole time, if yours is powerful enough for that; mine isn't). Put the dough back in the bowl, add the butter and work it in with the dough hooks. If you have a powerful mixer, knead it with that for another 20 minutes until the dough slaps on the side of the bowl. If you don't, I took it out to knead by hand, adding flour, realized it was going to need too much flour, put it back in the bowl and mixed with the mixer until the mixer got hot enough to worry me, and then proceeded with the next step.
Place your kneaded dough in a container and cover well. Refrigerate for at least six hours; I left mine overnight. Make sure to use a large enough container: my dough at least tripled in volume (and escaped the container!) by the time I woke up the next morning.
The next morning,
(around breakfast time):
Shape the dough, cover it (I put a layer of cling film directly on top of the dough itself, or you could just cover the bowl), and leave it to rise on top of a warm radiator, or atop an oven at 200F. Leave that all day.
That late afternoon / evening,
(about 4.5 hours before you want to consume these delicious treats):
Prepare the goo. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt together the butter and brown sugar. Remove from heat, let cool about 10 minutes, and whisk in the honey, cream, and water. Set aside.
On a floured work surface, roll out the brioche dough into a rectangle that is approximately 1/4" thick. Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans; sprinkle evenly on the brioche. Roll up the brioche jelly roll style, and slice the roll into buns about 2" thick. Spread the goo on the bottom of a roasting pan and place buns, evenly spaced, in the pan. Cover and allow to rise for 2 to 3 hours in a warm place.
After dinner,
(about an hour before you want to eat these):
Preheat oven to 350F. Place buns in oven and bake until golden brown, about 45 minutes (check after 30). Let cool for 10 minutes and then invert onto a serving platter. Serve with cafe au lait, or milk.
Notes
Full preparation info:
30 min soften butter + 1 hr prep dough + 6 hrs (or overnight) fridge + 5 min prep + 6 hrs (or all day) rise + 10 min prep goo + 15 min shape dough + 3 hrs rise + 45 min bake + 10 min cool
For the size of the roasting pan to place these in at the end: a larger one will yield shorter, wider buns; a smaller one will yield taller, narrower buns. Use whatever you prefer and have available.
SJ Note 16 Sept 2009: These are really, really good. The brown sugar seems like it's entirely too much when rolling them up, but in the end it's not so; I'll bet most of it goes into the sauce (most of which stayed in the pan, in this case). The original recipe was 5x this amount, and was supposed to make "6 large buns". I halved that and doubled the size of each bun, and still came out with 8 buns. So I've fifthed this copy; it should make 3 - 4 buns, depending on how you cut them. This dough was fun to work with, too - after adding the butter, tis the *softest* dough I've ever worked with! I had to leave out the nuts, of course, and it was still good. Though I highly recommend using them if you have no allergies/sensitivities to consider. Makes them ten times better!