For this week's recipe in the Tuesdays With Dorie project, we made Pecan Sticky Buns. Compared to the Hungarian Shortbread, this recipe was more complicated, involving the production of brioche dough, then a lamination process with butter (a la croissants or puff pastry) to create some nice layers in the sticky buns.
The brioche starts with a sponge, which gives the dough a nice boost of flavor.
After the sponge is ready, the dough is prepared. As far as making brioche dough, all I can say is three cheers for KitchenAid. The dough rises twice, with the second rise in the refrigerator overnight.
After the second rise, the dough is divided into two parts. Each is rolled out, then laminated with butter. I haven't done this process for a long time, and I'd kind of forgotten in which direction to fold the dough for that business-letter process. The rolled-out dough is eventually brushed with beaten egg, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and chopped pecans. I ended up with two nice logs of dough, so I must have managed it all OK.
The rolls are frozen for about an hour; then each is sliced into seven portions. The sticky-buns-to-be are placed in a pan in which the bottom has been coated with a stick of butter and a half cup of brown sugar.
Finally, after rising at room temperature for a couple of hours, the rolls go into the oven, where the buttery-sugary goodness on the bottom of the pan all bubbles up over the top of the pan and drips onto the oven floor, causing a disturbing amount of smoke. Also, after about 40 minutes, you end up with a couple of pans of nice-looking Pecan Sticky Buns.
In the end, I had two thoughts about this one:
1. The sticky buns were pretty good, even if the process was fairly involved.
2. I wish I'd baked only one pan of sticky buns and used the over half of the dough for a loaf of brioche.
