The Easiest Way to Make Cinnamon Rolls If You Don’t Know How to Bake
Cinnamon buns are one of those desserts where there isn’t much in-between. Either you love making brioche-like dough from scratch and cherish it for hours, or you slap a can of Pillsbury onto the checkout conveyor belt and crack open the tube at home. If you’ve ever wanted to make homemade cinnamon buns but don’t know how to bake bread, then this hack is for you. Grab a bag of ready-made pizza dough, a small box of heavy cream, and go.
I’m not going to tell you that pizza dough and enriched dough are the same thing, they are definitely different. Lean dough, such as pizza dough, is made with flour that is higher in gluten to make it chewier, and is commonly used to make savory dishes. Fortified doughs like buns use a lower percentage of gluten and a higher ratio of fats to sugars, resulting in softer breads. Pizza dough has very little fat, and by itself, a tolerable cinnamon bun won’t make it. Since we cannot mix the fat directly into the finished dough, we must bury it in the fat so that the dough can absorb some of it from the outside and stay moist. This is where heavy cream comes to the rescue.
You may already be aware of the Cinnabon TikTok “hack”, which, as I previously complained, is rather redundant in a prescribed app. However, it got me thinking that there could be better uses for the same idea. This is it. After you’ve stuffed the pizza dough with the buttery, cinnamon sugar paste, finished rolling it, slicing it, and placing it in the baking dish, you should coat the buns liberally with heavy cream. The butter from the filling and the heavy cream surrounding the buns will absorb a bit into the dough, but more importantly, the sweet filling and cream will combine to form a fragrant liquid that will protect the bread from direct heat, allowing it to retain its soft texture. instead of becoming chewy. If you’ve ever watched The Great British Cooking Show, you might think of it as a dessert with sauce of your own.
When they’re done, simply flip the rolls from the baking dish upside down onto a plate and let the sauce drip down the sides, as you would with a sticky bun. If you’re a frosting lover, you can certainly top it with cream cheese frosting or plain icing sugar . The result is a delicious, sticky mid-range cinnamon bun half-scratched that you don’t have to knead or steep for five hours.
I usually say “Bake until the top is lightly browned”, but in this case you don’t want the buns to take on a strong color on top. Because this is a lean bread, heavy browning will mean it will be very crunchy, so give the center buns a little nudge after 30 minutes. If they are firm and the sauce is bubbling, then they are done.
Pizza dough Cinnamon buns
Ingredients:
- 16 ounces store-bought pizza dough
- 1 pack softened butter
- ⅔ cup brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Optional ¼ cup finely chopped pecans
- ½ cup heavy cream, room temperature
Lightly oil a 7″ x 11″ casserole dish or 9″ cake pan. (You can add a strip of parchment paper for extra insurance.)
Roll out the pizza dough at refrigerator temperature into a rectangle about 15 inches by 9 inches. The rectangle I rolled out was somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 inch thick. Let it rest while you make the filling.
In a small bowl, mix butter, sugar, cinnamon and salt until smooth. Roll the dough rectangle back into shape if it bounced back at all. Spread the cinnamon mixture evenly over the dough, leaving a half-inch empty space on the far, longer side. If using, sprinkle topping with pecans. Roll out the dough away from you, starting on the long side closest to your body. Leave the roll seam side down.
Using a piece of string (or a knife if you prefer), cut the log into 12 equal pieces about 1 ¼ inches wide. Place the rolls next to each other, curled ends up, in a baking dish. Between them there will be a small gap for growth. Using a pastry brush, brush the top and sides of each bun with heavy cream. Drizzle the remaining cream on the pan so that there is a layer of cream on the bottom of the plate. Cover with a plastic bag and leave in a warm place for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350°F.
Open the rolls and bake them at 350°F for 30 minutes or until the sauce starts bubbling and the center roll is firm when pressed. Refrigerate the cinnamon rolls for 5 minutes, run a knife around the edges to loosen them, and invert the cinnamon rolls onto a plate or cutting board. Enjoy as is, with a dash of cream cheese frosting or a simple powdered sugar frosting . These buns keep covered in the refrigerator for about four days. Revive them by microwaving them for 10-15 seconds.