TWD: Baking with Julia - Pecan Sticky Buns

Pecan Sticky Buns are close to my heart.  Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has eaten sticky buns on Christmas morning.  It started out with me helping my mom make them every year, and we'd be up late on Christmas Eve getting them ready (as we had not planned ahead, year after year to do it earlier)!  Over time, it morphed into my mom helping me make the sticky buns.  Until very recently, we have always used the same recipe, one that my mom found in the newspaper long ago and clipped.  A couple of years ago, I did a test drive of a new recipe (not on Christmas) and then created a new sticky buns plan, using parts of each recipe for our Christmas morning treat.  I guess you could say I am a sticky buns aficionado!  So when I saw that the Tuesdays with Dorie group was planning on making Pecan Sticky Buns, it was a challenge I could not deny.

The recipe can be found in the Baking with Julia cookbook on page 190 or by checking out our hosts' blogs, Lynn of Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat and Nicole of Cookies on Friday.  Each month we pick one "easy" and one "challenging" recipe.  This was the challenging one for sure!  Not challenging in a complicated way, but challenging in a lots-of-steps way.  Does that even make sense??


You start by making Brioche dough.  This is something I had never done before. 

You first have to make a SPONGE.  This is done by mixing warm whole milk, active dry yeast, an egg and some flour together (photo 1).  You then cover that with more flour (2) and let it sit for 30-40 minutes.  The flour coating will crack (3) which tells you that things are working right.  Thank goodness! 

Now you can start actually making the dough.  Add sugar, salt, eggs and more flour to the sponge and mix (4).  Now things get a little crazy (in my opinion).  You add 1/2 cup more flour and turn the mixer to medium and beat for 15 MINUTES.  You must have a pretty good mixer for this.  I have a Kitchenaid Artisan mixer and she definitely got warm and tried to run away!  Towards the end I just kept my hand on her.  A comforting hand can do wonders sometimes.

Mash up some room temperature butter while your mixer is running (and before it gets all crazy).  The directions actually say that you can bash the butter into submission with a rolling pin, but I chose to be a kinder, gentler baker and just mash and smear it around with a dough scraper.  I had personally been beaten into submission at the gym that day and didn't want to take out my tiredness on poor butter!  Though it was a good thing I had that workout, considering the amount of butter in this recipe!!

The butter is slowly incorporated into the dough and mixed for another 5 minutes on medium.  Poor mixer!  The dough goes into a large buttered bowl, covered tightly with plastic, and allowed to rise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until doubled in bulk.  Once it is doubled, you lift the dough let it fall back into the bowl which effectively brings the dough back to the size it was before you let it rise.  Then stick it in the refrigerator (covered in plastic) overnight.  Phew.  At this point, the brioche is finished.

On to the actual sticky buns recipe.  You take half of the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out into an 11x13 inch rectangle (8).  It is best to do this on a really cold surface, like a marble tile or something.  I don't have one of those, so I froze a cookie sheet overnight and put my rolling mat on top of it.  My cookie sheet has a rim on two ends, and I flipped it upside down so the edges would not interfere with rolling.  Once the rectangle is complete, MORE BUTTER is dabbed across the dough and it is folded into thirds (9).  Then it is rolled again into the same 11x13 inch rectangle and folded into thirds again, wrapped in plastic and chilled for 30 minutes.  This is done for the other half of the dough, too.  (You must have lots of time and patience for this recipe!!)

After 30 minutes, the dough is rolled into that same rectangle again.  This time you brush it with some egg wash (10).  Here is where I think the recipe could have been more clear.  The recipe says "leaving the top quarter of the dough bare, sprinkle over half of the cinnamon sugar and half of the chopped pecans...".  In my experience making sticky buns, picture 11 shows how this is supposed to be done.  The dough would then be rolled from the LONG side of the rectangle.  This is INCORRECT.  After rolling the dough and sticking the logs in the freezer (the next step), I happened to watch a video someone in the group posted with Dorie Greenspan and Julia Child making these buns.  And low and behold she left the top quarter of the OTHER edge bare, and rolled the dough SHORT side up.  So I ran to the freezer, took out the logs, re-configured the filling and rolled it back up.  Phew!  Couldn't the directions have just said something about using the long or short side??

After about an hour in the freezer, the newly reconfigured logs were taken out and sliced into 1 1/2 inch buns.  Three pecans were gently smashed (is there a way to gently smash??  You know what I mean!) into one side of each bun and then they were placed into cake pans.  These pans had been prepared with (GET THIS!!) a stick of butter EACH that was mashed around the bottom of the pan and covered with 1/2 cup brown sugar.  Yes, EACH pan got another stick of butter and 1/2 cup sugar.  In case you are wondering, yes indeedy-do that is 5 sticks of butter total for the recipe.  Woah.  You can see in this photo how the outside of my buns got a little sugary/pecan-y when I re-rolled them.  Oh well!  The rolls were allowed to rise in the pan for a bit longer and then you are supposed to bake them.

At this point, it was Saturday night and I had no interest in actually EATING sticky buns, so I covered the pans with plastic and refrigerated them overnight.  In the morning, I popped them in the oven for a yummy Mother's Day breakfast.

My conclusions:

1. The cinnamon sugar mixture for the filling was not enough spice for me.  The recipe calls for only 1/4 teaspoon for the entire recipe, meaning each log really only got 1/8 teaspoon.  I recognized this after rolling the first log and used more cinnamon in the second batch, but it was still not enough for me.  I like my rolls to be more cinnamon-y. 
2. The butter/brown sugar topping is just WAY too much butter.  So much that it sloshed out of the pan and onto the floor as I was removing them from the oven.  Instead of inverting the buns onto a plate I used a pie pan so the butter wouldn't pour all over my counter (anymore than it already did).  I like the topping to be more of a sticky gooey mess that I then use pieces of bun to slather up.  
3.  The texture of the dough was heavenly.  It was light and had beautiful layers and was truly divine.  I wonder if I could make it with less butter in the actual dough?  

 If I get truly ambitious for a Christmas in the future, I may do the following:

1. Use the filling recipe I usually use.  That is 1/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 TB + 1 tsp. cinnamon and a pinch of salt.  Maybe add in a dash of ground cloves, too. 
2. Go ahead and roll the dough the way I originally had it.  This would yield MORE buns.  They would be smaller, but since these were literally 3 1/2 to 4 inches diameter, smaller would be okay.  My normal recipe yields 24 buns, baked in two 9x13 pans.  The initial rectangle is a bit bigger, but I would see how it went.  
3. Use my regular glaze recipe.  That is 1 cup brown sugar, 2 TB corn syrup, 1/2 cup butter, and 1 cup pecan halves.  I think this is the better butter-sugar ratio for the glaze.

But, I don't know.  The dough I usually make, while not as flaky as this one, is easier and still quite yummy.  Not a brioche, but still a darned good bun.  

I am truly glad I made this recipe.  It  was quite an involved task and now I have successfully made a brioche dough!