Einkorn Pecan Sticky Buns
/Soft, buttery einkorn sweet dough, filled with spices and baked into a caramel pecan glaze. Perfect for lazy Saturday mornings and weekend brunches.
“Your recipes are too fancy.”— I get that A LOT. So I’ve been pondering this idea of fancy recipes over the past few weeks, vacillating between the idea that I should try to make my recipes a bit more mainstream in order to grab the attention of others while also really just wanting to make recipes that I absolutely love. Why not just make pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and get all the Instagram likes and Pinterest saves? Not that simple recipes are bad, but they just don’t excite me like tossing hawaij into snickerdoodles or stirring red wine into chocolate cake. I know I’ve written about this before, over and over again actually, but I feel very passionately that when it comes to the kitchen, we should be fancy! I think in our culture that is so easily overwhelmed by the kitchen, we look for rules and familiarity. We look for specific recipes and weekly meal plans that follow certain diets and we’ve lost that creative spark that comes with cooking. We want cookbooks that list out our entire week’s grocery lists and tell us exactly what to make each evening (and how much salt to add) and we’ve lost the ability to cook for pleasure and enjoyment. This is important because what if Thursday comes around and I am really not feeling the ‘one pan, quick and easy, fajitas’ that I painstakingly planned on Sunday afternoon?
So often in our minds, fancy = time = difficult and that is simply not true! How are we living in a time where we are so into self-care, refusing ourselves the opportunities to care for our food in the same way that we do our skin and our homes and our routines? For me, being fancy means exploring flavors, being creative and unique in my approach to baking, and investing in the food that I’m putting in my body. It means swirling salted honey into whipped creams and playing with funky flours. It means trying new things, helping people think a bit outside of the box, and occasionally, it means challenging myself a little bit. I want my recipes to make you feel fancy, because I think being fancy is a good thing.
In that same spirit, here is a fancy version of my momma’s sticky buns. We used to make these with canisters of Pillsbury crescent rolls and we were lucky if a batch lasted an entire day in our house. This rendition uses an enriched sweet dough, spiked with einkorn flour and is swimming in toasted pecans bound together by a very gooey brown sugar caramel and I hope you make them and let yourself be a little bit fancy this weekend.
Einkorn Pecan Sticky Buns
Ingredients
- 255 g all purpose flour
- 85 g einkorn flour
- 70 g (1/3 cup) whole milk
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 2 eggs, at room temperature
- 40 g (2 tbsp + 1 1/2 tsp) granulated sugar
- 113 g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 56 g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tsp hawaij spice blend or 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon + 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- 113 g (1/2 cup) butter
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup toasted pecans, chopped
Instructions
- Heat milk until warm to the touch. Combine warmed milk and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Let proof for about 5 minutes, until foamy, while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
- In a medium bowl, combine all purpose flour, einkorn flour, salt, and sugar. Set aside.
- Lightly beat eggs and then add them to the mixer with the milk and yeast. Stir with a rubber spatula to gently combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the liquid and begin mixing, starting on low speed and gradually increasing speed, for 2-3 minutes, until a thick dough begins to form.
- With the mixer running on medium-low speed, add the softened butter, one tablespoon at a time, until incorporated. Once all of the butter has been added, increase the mixer speed to medium-high and knead for 6-7 minutes, until a smooth, elastic dough has formed. Turn the dough onto a work surface and knead by hand for another minute and then shape the dough into a ball. Place the dough ball into a greased bowl, cover, and let proof at room temperature for 2 hours, until swollen and almost doubled in size.
- After the dough has completed it’s first proof, you have a few different options for filling, shaping, and chilling.
- Option 1: Punch down the dough, leave it in the bowl, covered, and let rest in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, let dough rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes to soften. Roll the dough out, fill it, shape and cut the sticky buns, and place them in the pan for their final proof.
- Option 2: When the dough has completed it’s first proof, punch it down and turn it onto a work surface. Roll the dough out, fill it, shape and cut the sticky buns, and place them in a pan. Cover the pan and let the buns rest overnight in the refrigerator. In the morning, remove them from the refrigerator and complete a final proof before baking.
- Combine softened butter, sugar, and spices in a small bowl.
- Place butter in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Cook, swirling often, for 6-7 minutes until butter is beginning to brown, smells fragrant and nutty, and small, amber-colored specks appear in the bottom of the pan.
- Immediately whisk in brown sugar, followed by the heavy cream. The mixture will look separated for a moment, but continue to whisk until it comes homogenizes. Add the vanilla and the salt and pour the glaze into a 9-inch round baking pan. Sprinkle with toasted pecans.
- After the dough has completed it’s first rise, turn it out onto a very lightly floured work surface. Roll the dough into a rectangle, about 1/8” in thickness and roughly 12x16” in size.
- Use a small offset spatula or a knife to smear the filling mixture in a very thin layer over the surface of the rectangle, reaching all the way to the outside.
- Starting on a horizontal edge, roll the dough into a tight log and use a serrated knife to slice the log into eight 2” pieces.
- Place the rolls cut side up on top of the pecan glaze in your prepared pan. Cover and let proof for another 2 hours, until they’ve expanded about 3/4 in size. When the rolls have completed their final proof, preheat the oven to 375° F.
- Bake sticky buns for 25-28 minutes, until the are deeply golden and the glaze is bubbling around the edges. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before inverting the pan onto a large plate. Enjoy warm!
