Sticky Caramel Buns 'The Bread Bible'
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Oooo these buns today remind me of a cross between a Chelsea bun and golden syrup dumplings.
A soft and buttery enriched dough is filled and rolled, a "golden syrup dumpling sauce" with brown sugar, butter, golden syrup and touch of cream is added to the base of your cake pans. Bake it all together for today's light, buttery and certainly sticky 'Sticky Caramel Buns'.
It's not a Tuesday night after work bake, it's the leisurely weekend type bake when you have a bit of time and can't make it through Sunday without a sweet treat.
The recipe calls for a batch of Rose's basic brioche dough that begins with making a sponge.
The "sponge" is a yeast starter. I made mine in a mixer.
A flour mixture is then sprinkled over the sponge and two hours later you'll have bubbles rising through the blanket of flour in parts.
Using my stand mixer eggs and softened butter were beaten in.
The dough goes off to warm spot to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
After rising the resulting dough is off to the fridge. Brioche, like other enriched breads has a refrigerator period to solidify the butter and make the dough easier to handle. Pictured I'm I'm gently deflating before another rest and chill time.
The brioche dough was then turned out onto a floured bench top.
Then dough is rolled out and given a business letter turn. Fold one.
Fold two.
Business folded once more. Fold three.
Fold four.
Now it goes to "sleep" or you do, the dough is wrapped in loosely but securely in plastic wrap and placed in a zip lock bag. I didn't have a bag so I put mine in a plastic container. In the fridge it goes for between 6 and 48 hours to depending your schedule... you rule the brioche... something to tell yourself anyway.
YAY! it's the next day your dough has matured.
You have soaked your sultanas (US raisins) in *rum and water and reserved the water to make the glaze later on. I used bourbon because there ummm "wasn't any rum in the cupboard".
Rose uses light Muscovado sugar in this recipe but says light brown sugar would be fine. Muscovado is quite flavourful and worth seeking out on your next grocery run.
Another bowl holds the rest of your sticky bun filling of light muscovado sugar, white sugar, cinnamon and roasted chopped pecans ready to be stirred together.
Next the sticky bun topping. Light muscavdo, golden syrup and unsalted butter are brought to the boil. I did add something extra, a good pinch of salt. Cream is added before boiling again and pouring into the base of your cake pan.
I have a lot cake pans and even though Rose does include an extensive cake pan size guide in the book I never seem to have the right ones, Australian cake pans are differently sized. So I went with a six cup sphere silicone mould and a non stick 22cm cake pan. There is supposed to pecans in the bottom of the pan/pans but due to FUSSY ha ha people that don't like whole nuts I caramelised pecans to serve separately. 
I popped a food ring in the centre on the non stick pan so I could make a bun wreath.
You're up to rolling the dough out now, it's a wonderfully easy dough to work with rolls out beautifully to the 14 by 12 inch (approx 35 by 30 cm) rectangle.
The dough is brushed with beaten egg and the filling along with the drained sultanas are sprinkled over the surface. The dough is rolled using the ruler to help guide the role if necessary.
The roll is cut into four pieces, intern each piece is cut into three giving you 12 spiral buns. Six went in the sphere moulds, six in the cake pan, both went off covered with oiled plastic wrap to a warm spot to rise once more.
A glaze is made by reducing the reserved sultana water and adding butter.
Once the final rise is over, it's time to brush them with the *glaze and bake! Oh you did preheat the oven for an hour and placed inside a baking tray or oven stone to heat. They took about 25 minutes and were covered with foil after the first ten so they didn't over brown.
Here is the cake pan buns hot from the oven. Turned out after a few minutes so the bottom becomes the top.
Torn apart to peak at the interior of the buns. The texture is light and airy. Flavours of cinnamon, toasted pecans complement the juicy bourbon sultanas and butter caramel topping.
My favourite shape was the half sphere ones, the spiral pattern was distinctive and round and they had the cute domed tops or is that bottoms?
How I'd serve them: either traditional afternoon tea style, tea with lemon or modern as in top pic, adding generous swipes of Crème fraîche on the platter, extra caramel sauce, scatter the pecans, a few fresh raspberries and break your buns, dip in Crème fraîche, drizzle more caramel ... it's sticky and fun eating. Both traditional and modern I would add an "acid" component, even though the golden syrup is slightly acidic I like more so lemon in the tea, berries, Crème fraîche etc.
Would I change anything: I want more booze or at the other end of the spectrum swap the alcohol out for verjuice. Not sure about the sultana water glaze, I'd probably omit that as I don't think it added much. If I didn't add salt to the caramel I would have used sea salt flakes on top.
Rose's brioche recipe is my all time favourite for sweet and savoury applications, it's always light but sturdy enough to become a burger bun, buttery but not too buttery, hits all the right notes for a "doing that again"
Fun making my first sticky buns, ha ha I definitely have a gap in my baking repertoire "America" pretty much the whole of America. I always say "it's the first time I've baked.........".
Happy Baking :)
Today has been one of the 'Rose's Bread Bible Bakers' bakes where a group of fabulous bakers get together and bake from the pages of 'The Bread Bible'.
The Bread Bible
by Rose Levy Beranbaum is available from Amazon and all discerning book stores.
You might also be interested in making a butterflies.
or a little bit of happiness making the Partridge Family birds.
Friday, September 30, 2016 at 3:23PM 
Basic Hearth Bread 'The Bread Bible'
white bread flour, wholemeal flour, instant yeast and *honey 
Love this bit, the bubbles coming through the flour blanket.
Mixed altogether to form a rough dough. Salt is added, looks a lot in pic but it's only 10 grams. 
There is rising time at this point, then business turning/folding going on and then more rising. 
a lame: double sided blade used to slash loaves
I used a slightly concaved bread lame for the single cross slash and used round metal cookie cutters to cut a graduating circular pattern, I sprinkled flour on the circular pattern before baking. I also used a plastic Mickey mouse cookie cutter to "indent" a pattern in the smaller loaves I made. Then they were all baked in hot oven on slipats, with trays and ice ... it's all explained in the book. 
Fresh is good, Vegemite toast is better!! 
Vegemite on toasted hearth bread
I like the pretty edge that the circular cookie cutters created on the hearth bread, here topped with a Greek yoghurt beet and mint dip, pickled beet, feta and cashews. 
The Bread Bible
You might also be interested in quick and easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Spiders