Zingerman's cin-ful cinnamon rolls

If you ever visit Ann Arbor you really should stop in at Zingerman's. Start with the Deli, but be aware, Zingerman's is much much more than a local deli with top notch meats and cheeses, freshly baked traditional artisan breads, and the best sandwiches in town. They also have a coffeeshop, a bakehouse, a creamery, a roadhouse, a mail order business, a bake school, and a reputation. It's a very good reputation. Zingerman's uses only the best all natural ingredients from all over the world, they cut no corners and spare no expense, and they have a very strong commitment to traditional methods and traditional ingredients. Their food is expensive and it's definitely not low calorie. But you get what you pay for on both those fronts. I haven't tasted anything from Zingerman's that wasn't absolutely delicious.

For mother's day, my brother and his wife got my mom a Zingerman's gift certificate and suggested that she use it to take one of the bake classes. Mom chose the cin-ful cinnamon rolls class (not at all surprising -- Mom has always been a cinnamon roll fan) and I decided to join her. The class was this past Thursday and it was fantastic.

Here's Mom outside the Bake school.

She looks pretty good in that apron! Neither one of us are likely to get passionate about baking anytime soon, but we both had a good time and now we know how to make a very special treat when we get the urge.

I won't give you the recipe for Zingerman's cin-ful cinnamon rolls. I'm a little shocked that they hand it out to folks taking the class (of course, how ever would they teach the class without giving out the recipe?). I will however tell you the process and a few of the things I learned in class. There are 5 steps to making these delectable cinnamon rolls:

1. Make a poolish and let it rise.
2. Make the sweet dough and chill it.
   
3. Form the cinnamon rolls and let them rise.
4. Bake the cinnamon rolls. (This is when things start smelling heavenly)
5. Frost and devour the cinnamon rolls.

Did I forget the making the frosting part? We didn't do that in class.

We did the steps out of order so we could fit all the steps into the 4 hour class.

First we made a poolish. I don't have any pictures of that. A poolish (also known as a pre-ferment) is a starter made of flour, liquid, and yeast. In this case the liquid is milk. For bread it would generally be water. The poolish gives the yeast a head start. Sourdough starter is very similar to a poolish, but sourdough starter uses natural wild yeast while a poolish uses domestic baker's yeast. Bread poolish is usually liquidy, but this sweet dough poolish is firm.

We had to wait for the poolish to rise before we could do step 2 (making the dough), so we moved on to step 3 (forming the cinnamon rolls) with some already mixed and chilled sweet dough.

This is Shelby. He taught the class. A long time ago, before I met Buster, he and Shelby worked together at the bakehouse. That's a mirror over Shelby's table so we can see what he's doing.

Shelby is holding the chilled sweet dough. First he rolled out the sweet dough into a big rectangle.
Then he sprinkled it with yummy filling. That's a mixture of Korintje cinnamon (high quality Indonesian Cassia) and Muscovado brown sugar.

I was surprised to learn that Zingerman's uses Cassia rather than true Cinnamon (capital "C"). The vast majority of cinnamon (lower case "c") sold in the US is Cassia. Cassia and Cinnamon come from similar plants, but Cassia bark has a stronger flavor and a more woody texture. Check out the wikipedia entries I linked above to learn more. I don't know why Zingerman's chose Cassia over true Cinnamon, but Shelby said they did a lot of taste testing and Korintje is the best of all the cinnamons they tried.

Did you know that most of the brown sugar you buy in the supermarket is actually refined white sugar with molasses added back? Muscovado sugar (and most organic brown sugars) haven't had the molasses removed in the first place. Less refining means a more natural product and a better flavor.

Here Shelby is cutting the cinnamon rolls into several different shapes and placing them on a parchment lined baking pan. He was very fond of saying "Don't worry! It's still going to taste great!".

We were given pre-made chilled batches of sweet dough, the ingredients for the filling, and all the tools we needed to roll out and shape our own cinnamon rolls.

Then all our cinnamon rolls went into the proofer.
A proofer is simply a warm humidity controlled box that makes the dough ferment (rise) faster than it would at room temperature. You don't need to use one, it just shortens the rise time. I used one of these way back in my Pizza Hut days to proof the pan pizza dough. So there was no magic here for me.

While our cinnamon rolls rose, we took a few minutes to goof off.

Look! I'm a Hobart! ... Hey, how did buster get in there? He didn't take a baking class! He already knows all this stuff!

Back in class, our poolishes were ready and it was time to mix the sweet dough. First we creamed together the sugar, salt, and butter. A European style cultured butter is best for baking because it has a slightly higher fat content than your typical grocery store butter. Fat may not look so good on your hips but it tastes mighty fine and it makes dough bake up tender and flaky. Zingerman's uses Plugra butter. You can buy it at Trader Joe's.

Then we added eggs and, once they were integrated, we tore up our poolish and added it.

Shelby has just added his poolish. If you look closely you can see the doughy lumps in the egg-y mixture. Integrating the poolish by hand was a challenge. Next time I think I'll use the KitchenAid. Once the poolish was integrated we added the rest of the flour.

We used King Arthur all purpose flour. This flour has a lot of protein (11.7%) for an all purpose flour. Flours can range in protein content from 5 to 15%. Cake flour is at the low end, 5% to 8%. Low protein flour yields a dough with very little structure (a batter) which bakes into fluffy crumb. A higher protein flour, like bread flour (12%-13%), yields a much more structured dough that can be shaped and forms a chewy crumb. To get a structured dough with a tender crumb for our cinnamon rolls we use a higher protein flour -- either King Arthur all purpose flour or bread flour. The eggs and the high protein flour gives the dough structure while the sugar and the butter tenderize the dough so the crumb isn't chewy. If you use a lower protein flour (like Gold Medal all purpose flour at 10.5% protein) you'll likely end up with a puddle of dough instead of a nicely formed cinnamon roll.

While we finished mixing and wrapping up our dough the room filled with the sweet scent of cinnamon-y goodness. The cinnamon rolls were baking!

Shelby is frosting his batch of cinnamon rolls so we can all have a taste.
It's a cream cheese frosting made with cream cheese from Zingerman's creamery *drool*. I love cream cheese frosting and.. ya know those cream cheese commercials with the angels eating that store brand cream cheese? That's false advertising, folks. If angels were gong to eat cream cheese they wouldn't bother with that flavorless paste -- they'd eat Zingerman's cream cheese.

The cinnamon rolls would have been wonderful plain. With this stuff on top they were positively heavenly.

I brought home a dozen cinnamon rolls with frosting on the side, along with a batch of sweet dough ready to make a dozen more.


I gave a few of the cinnamon rolls to the bossman, and buster and I ate the rest in about 3 days. The sweet dough is waiting in the fridge to be baked up into another batch. I originally thought I'd freeze it and make it up in a month or so, but it's calling my name. I might need to do some baking this weekend.

The class was tons of fun. Like most things at Zingerman's, it was on the pricey side but worth it in the end. I learned not just how to make these beauties, but all about the ingredients. I learned about flour and yeast and brown sugar and butter and about how all these things interact and why. I honestly don't know if I'll make a whole lot of cinnamon rolls at home. I don't think my waist line can handle it! But the class was wonderful and I think I might just have to take another.