Cinnamon Rolls

One of our favorite bakeries, Stick Boy Bread Company, is up in the mountains of North Carolina. They have great coffee, artisan breads, and some really good cinnamon rolls! At our house, the goal is to have cinnamon rolls tasting like theirs. We don't mind the really sweet, cream cheese or butter cream topped kind you find at a Cinnabon, but we like this style so much more. We think it makes a great breakfast and a great dessert. A pan doesn't last long in our house! You should be able to find ingredients entirely locally--very basic things. The cinnamon you probably will have to have stocked, depending on where you live in the world. You could grind local cinnamon sticks here in East Asia, but they have a very "woody" taste since they have a lot of bark on them.

Cinnamon Rolls
4 - 4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbs instant yeast
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
~3 Tbs butter, softened to spread easily
1/2 cup sugar (light brown, white, or combo!)
3 tsp ground cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour and yeast; set aside. In a medium saucepan, heat and stir milk, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup butter, and the salt just until warm and butter almost melts (not more than 115F if using a thermometer)**. Add milk mixture to dry mixture along with eggs. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until well mixed then on high for 3 minutes (if you don't have a mixer, just beat hard by hand until batter is pretty smooth). Using a wooden spoon, stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can.
Turn dough onto a floured surface. Knead in enough remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough that is smooth and elastic (3 to 5 minutes total). Shape dough into a ball. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl; turn once to grease the dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size (about 1 hour).
Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface. Meanwhile, lightly grease two round baking pans, 1 9x13 pan, or whatever you have that works--I usually make these so they end up all touching and filling the pan, but you could put them on cookie sheets and spread far apart if you want them individual. Roll the dough into a large rectangle (about 8-10 x 18-20 inches). Spread 3+ Tbs butter over the dough (more or less to preference). Combine the 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle evenly over dough. Roll up the dough starting on a long side. Seal seam a bit by lightly pinching together. Slice rolls with a bread knife about 1 inch thick. Place in prepared pan. Cover and let rise in a warm place until nearly double. Bake at 375F/190C til golden brown--about 20 minutes. Will spring back to the touch. Drizzle with icing once cooled (1Tbs milk, 1/4 tsp vanilla, and 1 cup powdered sugar).

Make ahead directions: After shaping cinnamon rolls and placing in greased pans, cover the pan and stick in the refrigerator up to 24 hours. Remove from the fridge about 30 minutes before you are ready to bake them. They will rise well once in the oven.

**A note about yeast:
Active dry yeast, as it suggests in the name, needs to be activated. You have to have a very warm temperature of water (120-130F like the recipe suggests), but too hot and it will kill the yeast. This takes a lot of trial and error for you, as a cook, to know what the "right" temperature feels like if you don't have a thermometer. I personally prefer instant yeast. It takes the guess work out of making yeast breads! The water you use barely needs to be even lukewarm to the touch and it should still work. In a recipe like this, if you are using instant yeast, I would make sure your milk and butter mixture cools off quite a bit before you mix it in. Stir it every couple minutes for 5-10 minutes once you've removed it from the heat, then add it to the flour/yeast mixture and proceed. Often times i only put half the milk to heat with the butter. I remove pot from stove before butter is completely melted—then just stir to melt and cool it with the other half of the milk.  Yeast breads can be tricky, so just keep trying!