Classic Cinnamon Rolls

In my family, I started a holiday tradition upon which we have cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning. And I bake them. The smell and the taste is wonderful to wake up to on such a special occasion, and it gives me something to do in the early hours I'm up before the rest of my family now that I'm past the age of present peeking (mostly). The last few years I've utilized pizza dough to create Easy Breezy Morning Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas breakfast--which are always fun to make, delicious to eat, and don't require yeast (so they get done a lot faster since the dough doesn't need time to rise). But before I discovered this pizza dough hack, I made my yeast-less cinnamon rolls with biscuit dough. And while that recipe has remained a family favorite for years--my handwritten version safely tucked within a fat, orange binder with other old school, paper recipes--I've never actually posted it here. But when this year's Christmas rolled around and I just couldn't find whole wheat pizza dough at my local grocery stores (or any pizza dough, really), I went back to the classic and made cinnamon rolls that hearkened to my early years as an unofficial baker. 

I'll call these my Classic Cinnamon Rolls. It turns out the original recipe (which I adapted slightly) comes from a Cooks Illustrated recipe by Raquel Pelzel, published May 2002 (That's where I got some of the language like "shaggy" dough and "wet sand"). My mom had copied the pages with diagrams to know how to shape the rolls correctly (which are probably safely tucked away within her own recipe binder). But since I don't have those original copies, special thanks to Ed Santiago for his recipe archive scans of the pages:

Ingredients:

For the dough:
Flour (for dusting)
2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 Tablespoons melted butter

For the filling:
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon melted butter

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for the dough. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the buttermilk and melted butter for the dough.

2.) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until a shaggy dough forms, about 30 seconds. Then knead the dough until it is smooth and not shaggy. Pat into a 12x9-inch rectangle and spray the top of the dough lightly with nonstick cooking spray.

3.) In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt for the filling. Add the melted butter and stir until the mixture resembles wet sand. Then take half the mixture and pat a thin layer onto the rectangle of dough, pressing down but not too deep.

4.) Roll the dough into a log, crimp the edges, and cut into your desired amount of cinnamon rolls. Lay them into a round cake pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and sprinkled with the other half of the filling mixture (save just a little to sprinkle on top of the rolls as well). Press the rolls flat and dust the tops with the cinnamon mixture.

5.) Bake the rolls for approximately 23 minutes, checking early for even browning. Remove from the oven, let cool at least 5 minutes and then ice with your favorite icing. If you don't have a recipe, it's easy to make!

From my previous cinnamon roll recipe, here's a simple Icing Recipe:

Combine 1 cup powdered sugar with 2 Tablespoons of your favorite milk-like product (soy creamer, buttermilk, half and half, or just plain milk). Be careful when you pour the sugar, then stir thoroughly. Drizzle over slightly cooled cinnamon rolls and you're done!

Now for some pictures of the process!

Yes, the outfit is a must!