Copycat sticky buns

So, Miss M called me and asked a question about what type of flour to use for sticky buns. She and Miss K had seem something on Throwdown with Bobby Flay re: sticky buns and were prompted to make them. After talking with her on the phone, I set down my book and turned on the TV, and lo and behold, the same episode of Throwdown was on. I was bored at home (Mr. R being away and all) and decided to make the sticky buns with a few modifications (since I didn't want to go out for any ingredients).

Now - I've blogged about my own cinnamon buns before. And those are pretty good cinnamon buns. But I was interested in trying a true "sticky bun" recipe - a breakfast concoction dripping with sugar and caramely goodness.

Since I didn't have any high-gluten flour on hand, I decided to search for another brioche recipe. That was how Joanne Chang was referring to the bread base for the sticky buns in her recipe. I remembered that Ina Garten included a homemade brioche recipe in Barefoot in Paris, so I modified that recipe slightly (upped the sugar, slightly upped the flour, lowered the salt just a bit). I prepared the brioche dough and let it rise overnight in the fridge.

This dough was interesting - it was very very soft and eggy. Here I am being proper and putting in eggs, one at a time:Knead dough, KNEAD
Hello my good friends - toss, in chunks, two sticks of butter into the dough as it whips around on the dough hook
Prepare a bowl to receive the dough - nothing bad ever came out of a buttered bowl
And our extremely sticky dough mass goes into said buttered bowl for a chilly night in the fridge
Here is the brioche dough after a solid 14 hours of rising in the fridge and coming to room temp
I prepared a very sandy cinnamon/white sugar/brown sugar mixture to fill the dough later on. The recipe calls for only brown sugar - but I decided to be anti-authority and put in a mixture of white and brown.
Now it is time to prepare the GOO - Melt the brown sugar and the butter
Then, off the heat, add the honey, cream, and some water. Hello Mr. Bear - give me your honey
Meanwhile, over on the island, the dough had to be rolled out to 1/4 inch thickness. I was close
And sprinkled with the sandy mixture. It was like playing at the beach.
I sprinkled some nuts over the sandy mixture - a mixture of pecans and walnuts mostly, but also some almonds on about 1/3 of the rolls, just for kicks. And rolled 'r up - a bit tricky given the delicacy of this dough, but I got it. After the rolling, this log of doughy goodness was sliced into 1"/1 1/2" slices.
Prepare the pans with "Goo"
Then nestle the naked buns in said Goo
Put the pans back in a warm place to rise for another 2-3 hours - this was at the 2 hour mark
Then bake at 350 degrees until browned. NOTE - Maybe it is due to using the lower-gluten AP flour, or my oven, or a combination of the two, but these buns were ready WELL ahead of the 45 minute mark in the recipe - more like 30 minutes. So keep an eye on them! As you can see, I need larger baking pans to prevent the evil triangle sticky bun.Let them cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto the serving platter to behold the gooeyness:These were definitely tasty - a departure from my standard cinnamon bun. If I make them again, I will definitely up the cinnamon. The recipe only called for 1 tsp, and I just really wanted more cinnamon flavor. These weren't particularly tricky to make - but you do have to allow a lot of time to make them. It would be a pain to try to make for, say, a gathering of friends at your house at 9 am on a Saturday morning. And I'm not 100% sure the buns would be well served to do a slow rise in the fridge, sitting in the goo, overnight. Will have to experiment more in the future!