Yeast Water Cinnamon Rolls

We bumped into a container marked as stock in the fridge.  We were looking for stock but inside was a once mature YW levain for panettone that we made on Feb 1st.   Here it was 2 weeks later and we still hadn’t used up all the excess levain build we had made trying to get to a panettone white levain.

Sadly, I had already started another YW levain a couple of hours before to make Cinnamon rolls.  So, I combined the two into one large YW levain.  My apprentice chucked in some more AP flour and barked that we would call it ready to go if it ever doubled.  We left it out on the counter overnight and sure enough, after a couple of hours in the morning, it was ready – in about 10 hours total.

Normally we wouldn’t make a levain that was 40% of the total weight of the dough but after recently following Peter Reinhart’s large levain process with success we though this wasn’t far out of line.  While the levain was finishing it’s doubling, we autolysed everything else, except the filling and the butter, for two hours.  We wanted to develop the gluten fully before adding the butter.

Once the autolyse and the YW levain came together, we did 10 minutes of French Slap and folds. The dough really developed nicely and became a supple and smooth.  After 20 minutes of rest, we stretched out the dough into a rectangle and added the softened butter and folded the dough envelope style.

We then did another 1 minute of slap and folds to incorporate the butter and get the gluten back in to its former well developed state.  We then covered  let the dough and let it ferment for an hour.

The dough was then rolled out ¼ “ thick on a floured work surface into a large rectangle.  The filling was sprinkled over the top and the dough rolled up jelly roll style from the wide side.  The dough was cut into 12 pieces and each one placed cut side down into a PAM sprayed  9x13” Pyrex glass pan.

The rolls were covered in oiled plastic and allowed to proof overnight on the counter for 12 hours.  Once the rolls had proofed we placed them into the preheated mini oven at 375 F and tossed ¼ C of water into the bottom of the broiler pan.

After 10 minutes the rolls were rotated 180 degrees and baked for another 10 minutes.  At that time the oven was turned down to 350 F, convection this time.  The rolls continued to bake for 5 minutes when they were rotated again and covered in aluminum foil to keep them from over browning.   The temperature probe set for 185 F was also inserted into the center of the rolls.

10 minutes later the rolls were at 185 F when they were removed and placed on a cooling rack.  After 10 minutes the powdered sugar and lemon juice glaze was applied with a spoon.

These cinnamon rolls are not overly sweet.  They are delicious and the perfect use for yeast water where sour is not wanted.  The crumb is moist open, nicely layered and shreds. The cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice, snockered dried fruits, chocolate chips and a modest amount of brown sugar with the lemony, sugar drizzled top is a great combination.  I couldn’t help myself and had 1 and half rolls for breakfast this morning.

Formula