Grandma Morrill's Cinnamon Rolls

• Cinnamon sugar and butter between very thin layers, with the layers staying separate.
• Layers about as thick as a pinky finger.
• About six swirls in a roll.
• Very dark on top. Not golden.
• Moist all the way through, with no frosting.
• No frosting, no glaze, no nuts, no raisins.
• No puffy bread ring on the outside. The outer layer looks like all the others.
• He said there was no part you didn't want to eat.

He added more after tasting version one:

• Cinnamon sugar on the outside, on the outer wrap and the last twist.
• Sweeter overall, but the dough itself was not sweet.
• Flat and even across the top. Not domed.
• She rose the dough in the oven with a towel over it. He does not know if the oven was on or if it was just the light.

The warm rise settles a question he raised himself. He wondered if she used baking soda instead of yeast. She didn't. A dough leavened with soda or powder has no reason to rest somewhere warm, because it starts working the moment it hits liquid. A warm rise under a towel is a yeast technique.

When the recipe and the description disagree, I follow the description.

This is the part that decides everything else.

Most cinnamon roll recipes have you roll a 16-inch rectangle and slice the log. That gives about four fat turns and leaves a plain flap of dough wrapped around the outside. The flap is the puffy ring Kevin does not remember. Rolling to 24 inches and cutting strips lengthwise means I pick the number of turns instead of taking whatever the log gives me.

If you scale this recipe, change the width of the sheet. Leave the length at 24 inches and the thickness at 3/16 inch. A sheet with both dimensions halved comes out looking fine and is wrong.

Version one confirmed this part. I got about five turns and no plain flap on any roll.

One caveat I only learned after. Kevin remembers cinnamon sugar on the outside, and a coated roll would not look like plain bread even if a flap were there. So the outer ring is no longer the only evidence for the 24 inches. The six swirls and the thin layers still need it.

Kevin remembers them flat and even across the top, not domed. That is a packing question. Rolls crammed against each other can only go up, and they press each other square until the pan reads as one surface. Rolls with room around them dome individually and let the melted butter run out between them.

Version one used a 9-inch round and they had gaps. A 9-inch round gives about 10 square inches per roll. The 8x6 gives 8, and a finished roll covers about 7. Tight is the point.

The rolls have to be moist with nothing on top of them. Cooking a little of the flour with water first lets the dough hold more water and keep holding it. It is also what makes it safe to bake them as dark as the description calls for.

A grandmother in that era would more likely have used mashed potato or scalded milk. I want to try the potato version next, and there is now a better reason than period accuracy.

Kevin thinks she rose the dough once as a single lump, then rolled it, cut it and baked it right away. This dough cannot do that. The tangzhong makes it slack on purpose, and the overnight chill is there only because it is the one way it rolls to 3/16 inch without fighting back. A stiffer potato dough is the kind you can roll warm off one rise. If his memory is right, the tangzhong is not just a different choice. It rules her method out.

Altitude. I cook at 5,280 feet in Denver. The yeast is down to 2.5g for that reason and both rises run short. The oven is at 365°F instead of 350°F. Judge every rise by looking at the dough, not by the clock. Over-proofing is the failure this recipe is most likely to hit, and it merges the layers.

Dry air. Weighing the tangzhong before and after cooking is the fix most worth doing here. It reduces further than the recipe expects and quietly lowers the hydration of the whole dough. Cover dough with plastic wrap and not a towel. In dry air a towel pulls moisture out. The exception is the rise in the oven, where the box holds its own moisture and a towel is fine.

Storage. Cool them all the way, then store airtight. Bagging them warm steams the crust soft. Reheat at 300°F for five to seven minutes. A microwave ruins the layers.

I put the dough in the fridge before the first rise instead of after. Cold dough barely ferments, so nothing happened. I took it back out and let it rise on the counter.

The rise was slow and I nearly threw the batch out. I checked the underside of the bowl and there were bubbles, which meant the yeast was working and the dough was just cold. I boiled a mug of water in the microwave, pushed it to the back, and put the covered bowl in with the power off. It came up in 40 minutes.

I was waiting for the dough to double. Doubled is too far for this recipe. Half again is the target.

I rolled the dough out on a silicone mat. The mat is 16 inches long, so the sheet could not reach 24 inches, and the raised border kept the pin off the edges. I moved to the counter.

I added the yeast dry, mixed in with the salt. Salt sitting against yeast pulls water out of it. Next time I bloom the yeast in the warm milk and keep the salt on the other side of the bowl. That is how the recipe above is written.

The layers worked. Distinct bands of cinnamon and dough in every roll, about five turns, no plain flap.

The color did not. They came out barely golden against a target of very dark. The cause was in how I pulled them. The recipe gave two signals, color and temperature, and assumed they arrive together. On rolls this size they do not. The centers hit 197°F while the tops were still pale, so I followed the number and the bake ended before the browning did. The recipe above now says color decides and temperature is only the floor.

I also had no cream and used whole milk, which browns less. That contributed. It does not explain a gap that size.

The proof was short. They went in under and never grew into each other, so there were gaps between them and a lot of butter ran out onto the pan.

Kevin said they were chewy and read as underbaked to him. Three things could cause that and all three were true at once: underbaked, under-proofed, and made with bread flour. The first two are fixed in the recipe above, so the next bake tests them for free. If they are still chewy after that, it is the flour, and I will try all-purpose.