Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Here they are… the caramel pecan sticky buns that started my obsession with making bread the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day way. They are so good that I am sure they will also start your obsession.

This is one way to use up a portion of this challah dough. Roll it out, spread it with cinnamon-sugar-butter and sprinkle it with pecans, sit it on a bed of brown sugar-butter-pecan goodness, let it rest, let it bake, and then you will be in caramel pecan sticky bun heaven.

I’m telling you, these are GOOD, and although they require some waiting time, they don’t require a lot of physical effort. They don’t even have to be particularly pretty or neat looking to still taste out-of-this-world amazing. There is a TON of butter and sugar in this recipe, so if you’re looking for something diet-friendly, you might want to pass on this one… but I wouldn’t recommend it ;).

The pecans are calling your name. Make these sticky buns. You know you want to…

Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns

From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Makes 8 buns. This recipe uses one 1 1/2-ish lb portion of challah dough.

Caramel-Pecan Topping

In a medium bowl, cream together:

6 tbsp unsalted butter, soft

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

Spread the mixture evenly over the bottom of a 9″ round cake pan. Sprinkle it with:

1/2 cup roughly chopped pecans (you can leave them whole if you prefer)

Set aside.

Filling

In a small bowl, cream together:

4 tbsp unsalted butter, soft

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Set aside.

In a 375˚F oven, toast:

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Toasting the pecans keeps them from getting soggy inside the rolls. They should take about 20-25 minutes – watch them carefully and stir several times. Set aside to cool.

Assembly

Place a 1 1/2-ish lb portion of chilled challah dough on a lightly floured surface. Using your hands and a rolling pin, roll and stretch it into an 18″ x 9″ rectangle. Keep the dough lightly floured to prevent it from sticking, but try not to over-flour it.

Spread the rectangle of dough evenly with the filling, then sprinkle it with the toasted pecans. From one of the long edges, roll up the dough securely to enclose the filling.

With a sharp serrated knife, cut the roll into 8 pieces. Arrange them over the caramel-pecan topping mixture in the baking pan. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and set aside to rest for about 1 hour.

After an hour, the buns should have expanded quite a bit. With a few minutes left in the rest period, preheat the oven to 350˚F. Remove the plastic wrap, place the pan on a cookie sheet to protect against bubbling-over caramel (I didn’t do this and my oven was a mess of melted butter and molten caramel!), and bake at 350˚F for about 40 minutes, until golden brown and cooked all the way to the center of the pan.

Place the pan on a cooling rack for about 5 minutes, until the bubbling caramel subsides. While still hot, run a knife around the edge of the pan to release the buns and invert them onto a plate (if you wait for them to cool they will stick to the pan). Scrape out any caramel and pecans left behind.

Devour!

I’ve been making bread using stored dough à la Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for a few months now, and I figured it was time to branch out from the basic, rustic boule dough and into something fancier. This is the “master” challah dough, which can be made into not only the traditional braided loaf, but also used as the base for things like sticky buns, coffee cakes, doughnuts, and anything else that you might want to use an enriched dough for. “Enriched” meaning that in addition to flour, water, yeast, and salt, this dough includes eggs, butter, and honey to make it even more delicious and decadent.

This is the dough that convinced me to buy the ABin5 book – I used it to make caramel pecan sticky buns (which I will be sharing in a few days!), and it was so delicious that I had to have the book.

As I mentioned in my previous ABin5 post (which I recommend reading if you are going to make this dough!), Canadian all purpose flour has a higher protein content than the flour that was used to develop the book’s recipes, so I have adjusted the amount of water accordingly (the original amount of water is 1 3/4 cups). Because this dough contains eggs it has a refrigerated storage life of 5 days, after which it can be frozen in appropriately-sized portions for up to 4 weeks (defrost overnight in the fridge before using). When I made this dough, I had three recipes in mind to use it with, so I divided it up into thirds of slightly less than 1 1/2 lbs each.

Challah Dough

Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Check out their website for wonderful recipes, tips, and bread-baking support. Makes just over 4 lbs of dough.

In a large, 4 – 6 quart bowl or container with a lid, whisk together:

4 large eggs

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 1/2 tbsp instant yeast (any kind of granulated yeast will work)

1 tbsp coarse salt

Whisk in:

2 cups + 1 1/2 tbsp warm water

Add:

7 cups all purpose flour, measured with the “scoop and sweep” method:

With a sturdy wooden spoon, mix in the flour until the dough is evenly moistened. You may need to get in there with your hands to incorporate the last of the flour (resist the urge to knead the dough). It should be quite sticky.

Cover the dough with a non-airtight lid – you want to prevent it from drying out but still allow it to breathe (my lidded container was in the fridge with other dough in it, so I used loose plastic wrap).

Let it rise in a warm place for about 2 hours, during which time it should grow in size quite a bit and develop all kinds of beautiful bubbles.

Place it in the fridge for several hours or overnight, until the top flattens out and sinks a bit. The dough needs to be chilled before handling.

When you are ready to bake, dust the surface of the dough lightly with flour. Grab the floured dough and pull out the desired amount (use scissors to cut off the chunk of dough).

Dust the dough portion lightly with flour and shape it into a ball by gently pulling the top of the dough and tucking it underneath, handling it as little as possible while doing so (this should take about 5 seconds). I divided the dough into thirds (just under 1 1/2 lbs each) – one to bake with immediately and the other two to freeze for later.