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In March Bon Appetit’s issue, Molly of Orangette had a recipe for homemade cinnamon rolls in her monthly column. Dan’s mom told me that she tried it and it didn’t rise the first time when she followed the recipe exactly, but the second time when she added the yeast into the warm milk before adding the other dry ingredients, it worked. This makes perfect sense to me from what I can remember when I successfully made believable pizza dough two years ago and I did that as well.

Unlike Molly, I do not have any fears of yeast except when I think about the experiments we made with yeast in school — makes me cringe. I’m okay with yeast, and I was confident and very hopeful about making these rolls even if the closest I’ve been to making them were the Pillsbury ones. Classy. I took a lot of pictures during the process. I was drooling and imagined arias of Thank You’s and You’re Wonderful’s from Dan when he tries them. [In my head, everything is theatrical. There's either a dramatic wail or a cry for joy...nothing in between. I blame being a Leo for that.]

Meet Bean, the promising seed of dough that I thought would come to life. He was very pinchable.

Dough

I think this is where my first problem lies: I could have put too much flour. After doing some research last night, I read that some people have a tendency to over-flour the dough for fear of it sticking to their fingers. Uh, that would me.

I placed Bean who I started calling Ball, into a big bowl, all primed to rise.

Or so, I thought. After 2 1/2 hours covered, tucked inside the dark oven, Ball wasn’t as alive as I hoped he would. But I persisted. I convinced myself that Ball is alright and he expanded. [Not! Obviously! I should have looked at the Before photo.]

I rolled him out — and let’s call him Spread now — into a nice pretty canvas for all the goodness to come:

I buttered him up:

And spiced him real well:

I almost had a heart attack just looking such prime real estate:

Is that even legal?

Then I started rolling it into a log…

Rolled…

Until:

Then it was time to slice it into realistic eating sizes, lest we try to devour them whole.

I was still hopeful, given the sight of these:

But the 2nd rise…the 2nd chance was elusive to these hard working hands:

Stubborn that I am, I still baked them. The first one came out emaciated:

It was sad. Make no mistake, it was absolutely delicious with the cream cheese topping. But dough-wise, wow, it was a major disappointment. It was crusty, and kind of raw in the middle actually.
STILL…I persisted yet again with the other batch, and tried to make it rise with the almost-cooled oven from the first baking. And almost out of desperation it looked like this:

The dough turned out a WEE bit better than the first, but nowhere near satisfactory:

SIGH. Till next batch. We’ll have to buy a more cinnamon if I keep at this. I’m off to give it another try. Cross your fingers!

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