Baking with Julia - Sticky Buns! (some with raisins!)

This is a first for me – first time making brioche, first time being super late on an “assignment,” first time using so freaking much butter and not feeling at all guilty about it! I went running this morning so the raisin sticky bun I just scarfed literally 2 minutes after it came out of the oven is totally cancelled out. That’s a thing, right? Anyway, because of the long mixing time on this dough, I was a little scared for Candy. The last time she had to knead for an extended period, things got a little ruh roh. I decided to mix this up at work yesterday and finish the buns at home. In the work kitchen we have a 6qt Bowl-Lift Kitchenaid that I felt was better able to handle the long mix.

I was surprised by how exactly by the book this went. My starter cracked just like the picture. My dough did the slappy thing (ishy noise btw) and it became smooth and beautiful just like Dorie said it would! It was so nice to have things go totally right. How often does that really happen? Luckily I had just watched Susan do the laminating and rolling thing in class last week so I felt pretty confident about it and did it last night without a hitch before bed.

This morning I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at like 6:30 which is a full hour earlier than I normally do. Everyone watched Downton Abbey right? I mean, I think everyone did. In the very first episode one of the main characters (Anna the head housemaid) says “Just one time I’d like to wake up natural” after they are roused out of bed at an ungodly hour to take care of the upstairs Crawley crew. I was thinking about how one of my favorite things about my life and my job is that I get to do just that pretty much every day. I mean there are some times when I have to set an alarm obviously but on most days I can just get up when I feel like it and as long as I’m ready to go and get the store open by quarter to 10, things are A-okay. So when I woke up kinda early today, I was super excited and ready to finish up these sticky buns. I took them out of the freezer and let them thaw a little bit while I got the pans ready. Then I sliced them up easy as pie and got them situated in their pans. I had decided to put raisins in one and leave one plain. I’ve expressed my feelings on nuts in the past but I love raisins like it ain’t no thang. They are delicious! I would have put them in both rolls but I’m going to be sharing them with co-workers and friends and not everyone is on the raisin bandwagon like me.

Can you see those awesome swirls??? You can see the butter and the cinnamon-sugar mixture and it’s a beautiful thing! I let them rise until about 9:30 and then I baked them and they looked like this:

I know I’m just over-using the exclamation points all over this post, but I can’t help it! I am just impressed with these! I mean, aren’t they impressive looking!? I thought the one I ate was delicious and I can’t wait to bring the rest of them in to work to share with everybody. Love the butter, people! It loves you! If you want to make some of these beauties yourself, check out our hosts for this week: Nicole of Cookies on Friday and Lynne of Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat.

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