Pecan Cinnamon Rolls
http://rebeccmeister.livejournal.com/836235.html

Round two of cinnamon roll-making has produced highly satisfactory results, as far as I'm concerned. For a number of years, my mom would make cinnamon rolls once a week for breakfast, using a recipe out of the Tassajara Bread Book (which is a fantastic book, by the way). Her cinnamon rolls are good, though a touch dry for my tastes. The recipe I've adapted is not as wholesomely healthy, but it does a slightly better job of moisture management. It's modified from that pecan sticky bun recipe I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. Much less sweet-tasting, so it doesn't make my teeth hurt anymore.

You do have to budget some time to make these, about 2 hours total. I happened to wake up rather early this morning (a product of getting up early all of last week), so that was no big deal. And this is always true of cinnamon rolls. I'll mention that my mother will often prep cinnamon rolls to the point where they're almost ready to bake, and will then pop them in the freezer. Then, when she wants cinnamon rolls for breakfast, she'll pull the pan out of the freezer and let them thaw/rise overnight, so that in the morning she can bake them and they're ready to enjoy, warm out of the pan.

Oh, one last note. The original recipe was written for people with stand mixers at their disposal. One of my pet-peeves about recipes is those which assume that home cooks own an array of specialty instruments, including stand mixers. If you want to make this by hand, you can. The early stages of dough formation will look a bit sloppy and ugly, but it will all come together when you knead it!

Ingredients
3/4 C whole milk
1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter - soften 6 Tbsp for the dough, melt 2 Tbsp for the filling
2 eggs
Flour: 1/2 C soy flour, 1 C white flour, 2 1/4 C whole wheat flour (add slightly more as needed)
1 tsp salt
Filling: 1/2 C dark brown sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 C pecan pieces

The dough: Warm the milk to proof the yeast (takes 1 min in the microwave). In a medium-large bowl (e.g. stand mixer bowl), combine the warm milk with the yeast, then add the granulated sugar and the 6 Tbsp of softened butter and mix until the butter is broken up. Things will look chunky at this point, but that's okay. Then add the eggs, one at a time. Lastly, add the flours and salt and mix at low speed until they're incorporated. The white flour gives you a bit more gluten, the soy flour gives you a bit more protein, and the whole wheat flour gives you nice, substantive flavor. Use good whole-wheat bread flour for this. 

If you're using a stand mixer after all of the blather up above, you'll do this for about 2 minutes, then you should pause and scrape down the bowl, then continue to mix for an additional 2 minutes. If you're using less fancy equipment, this would be a fun point to get personal with the dough and knead it briefly, for about 2-3 minutes. See, there, you're having a good time with this, aren't you.

Now form the dough into a ball and lightly oil it. Plop it into a lightly oiled bowl and let it rest for 30 mins at room temperature.

Now the fun part begins. Roll out your dough to form a 9-by-24-inch rectangle. Maybe flour the counter beforehand, though. Combine the brown sugar with the cinnamon in a small bowl. Brush the 2 Tbsp of melted butter across the top of the dough, and then sprinkle the sugar-cinnamon mixture over this. Then, if that wasn't enough, sprinkle the pecans over all of that. This is cinnamon rolls, so you know what's next - roll up the dough along the long axis (hotdog-style, so to speak) and pinch the seam. Take a dough cutter and cut the log into 12, 2-inch pieces. Oil a pan - I used a springform pan, which was perfect, but a 9x12-inch pan would probably also work. Actually, I used the buttery remnants to butter the pan.

Now, heat the oven to 325 degrees fahrenheit, and let your cinnamon rolls sit in the pan for another 30 minutes or so. Then, pop them in the oven and bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until the tops start to turn all golden.

These will be great right out of the oven, or it's easy enough to reheat them and enjoy later.