Sour Dough Cinnamon Rolls

My friend Gretchen, shared her sourdough starter about a year and half ago.

Since then I've made many recipes with it and have had a very fun time experimenting.  Mostly I make sourdough pancakes or dinner rolls (see a Feb. 2016 about that).

Today is the first time I have ever made sourdough cinnamon rolls and it was a success.

 

They came out of the oven just as dinner was going in the oven tonight, so we ate cinnamon rolls and drank milk before supper.  Is it any wonder we didn't have much appetite for anything else?

Here are the steps and the recipe is at the end.

Proof the sourdough twice.  Here it is starting it's second proofing.   Mix equal parts sourdough starter, white flour and water.  I use Wheat Montana White Flour and Strong Alkaline water from our water machine.

 

I left it sitting on the cupboard overnight under a towel.

 

Next morning this is what it looked like.  I used one cup in the pancake batter.

 

I put one cup of this starter in the fridge for future use and there was still a half cup left over so I fed it again in equal parts and let it sit another day.  This would be the third proofing.

On my lunch break today I mixed up the dough for cinnamon rolls.  The steps are shown here:

Rolled out dough on the roul'pat.

 

Spread with one cube of soft butter

Sprinkle generously with ground cinnamon.  This was about 4 Tablespoons.

 Spread about one cup loosely packed brown sugar over everything.

 Then roll it up.

 

Using dental floss, cut sections.

 

Place the rolls loosely in a 9 x 13 baking dish.

 

Let raise for 4 hours in a warm place.  I placed a towel over the top.  I had turned the oven on for lunch and our Large Le Cruset Soup Pot sits on the burner that has the oven vent.  So it was warm and retains heat.  That was the perfect warm spot for this.

 

Four hours later...perfectly raised.

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Bake for 13 minutes.  And this is what it looked like:

 

Flip it out on a tray and this is the result.  It's still warm and we really did eat dessert before dinner tonight.

 

Here is the recipe I used.  I adapted another recipe I had in my file:

In the Bosch bread mixer fitted with dough hook, put in the wet ingredients:

1/2 cup room temp whole milk

1 cup sourdough starter, proofed at least twice

1/3 cup melted butter

2 eggs, room temp

Blend in 

1 teaspoon yeast

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 cup white sugar

1 Tablespoon vital wheat gluten

Then add

2.5 cups all purpose white flour, I use Wheat Montana 

Add just a little more flour (12-27-2016 I added 6 tablespoons) if needed to pull it together.  The dough should still be soft and sort of sticky.

Roll out onto a baking mat such as the Demarle Roul'pat

And spread on

One cube softened butter

3 or 4 Tablespoons ground cinnamon

3/4 cup loosely packed brown sugar.

Roll up, cut pieces with dental floss and place in a buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.

Raise 4 hours in a warm place.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

Turn out onto a tray and be sure and taste them while warm.

For the next time I'm going to do this the way my mother does. 

These are her words:

 To make them really gooey put 1 cube melted butter, 1 cup brown sugar and more cinnamon in the bottom of the pan and mix well before adding the cinnamon rolls.

This is the photo of the cinnamon rolls tipped upside down when I used my mother's recipe on 12-25-16.