Last weekend my in-laws came over to have breakfast with us before helping out on some stuff for our respective companies.  (Graham may have been replaced by his mother as the best assistant ever. He’s understandingly disappointed, but he’s hoping for other C-level opportunities inside the same company. For her party, Marcia may be promoted.)

Not sure what to make, and not too keen to venture over to the grocery store, I made cinnamon rolls with ingredients I had on hand. I mixed dough together Friday night using 1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 2 cups all purpose flour — a bold move considering I’d never eaten a whole wheat cinnamon roll and was going to be serving them to my in-laws.*  I really wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

* I should mention my sister-in-law is an award winning pastry chef and my mother-in-law an accomplished cook herself. I’m amateursville compared to these ladies.  AND YET, I make bold moves like whole wheat flour substitution, a move of distinct culinary chutzpah.

I let the dough rise overnight in the fridge; the next morning I got up early and rolled it out.

I’m a huge fan of Penzey’s Spices and they’ve got a huge collection of cinnamon varietals.  Have you ever compared cinnamon?  If not, you should. It’s a fun, enlightening activity (for kids and adults!) that’s really worthy of its own blog post. Anyway, I had Chinese Cassia, Ceylon, and Vietnamese cinnamon on hand.  Generally my favorite (hands down) is Vietnamese cinnamon, but I had a bottle of Chinese Cassia with a broken lid.  And since it’s recommended for cinnamon rolls anyway, that’s what I went with.

Had I to do it all over again, I’d double – maybe triple – the amount of cinnamon. Graham and I love tasting cinnamon rolls from everywhere we can, and one of our favorites is from – are you ready – IKEA.  Seriously.  It’s not the dough, which is somewhat bland and unmemorable; it’s not the icing, which is passable but not extraordinary.  It’s the liberal use of cinnamon that gives IKEA cinnamon rolls their real zing….. (And probably why they sell so many.  The siren call of cinnamon rolls cooking in IKEA while you shop. Brilliant!)

I had hazelnuts on hand from the holidays, so instead of Texas pecans or walnuts I added the leftover hazelnuts.  Not sure, I’d do that again because hazelnuts are so strong.  Paired with the whole wheat dough – itself a distinct flavor – the combination completely overpowers the already lacking cinnamon.

I also added golden raisins, mostly because that’s what we had.  (Must be economical!)  I didn’t notice a difference.

You can’t see it here, but it took me a bit to get the right thickness on cutting the cinnamon rolls. The recipe I followed directed me to cut the dough into 15 equal cuts, but I set aside a portion of the dough (there’s just so many cinnamon rolls 4 people should eat in the course of a week), so I wasn’t sure on the desired thickness. In the end, I was most pleased with a 1.5″ thickness.

Bake, bake, bake, bake – DING! The result:

We can’t forget the icing! I totally MADE UP my icing recipe using powdered sugar and leftover maple syrup – introducing yet a third distinct flavor to work with the whole wheat and hazelnuts. Maple’s probably great with whole wheat and cinnamon (for sure!), but again the hazelnuts hung us up here.  Also, because I free-formed the recipe, we could taste the powered sugar. I wonder if that’s why some recipes introduce vanilla and milk (sometimes even coffee!) into the icing recipe instead of just using powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Don’t my cinnamon rolls look yummy?!

There’s a lot of promise here.  The dough, first of all, is nice and flavorful.  My father-in-law’s first comment: “Marsh! They’re whole wheat!” I took that as a vote of confidence – no need to throw out the frozen portion of dough, though in future iterations I’ll have to come up with a way for it to be less “yeasty” as Graham put it.  The hazelnuts are a no-go.  Increase the cinnamon A LOT. Consider following a recipe for the maple icing.

Otherwise – hooray, cinnamon rolls!

I got a new flash for my camera for my birthday. Tonight I experimented with it while making homemade pizzas at night in the kitchen. I was pleased with the results; even more importantly, so was Graham.

For the pizza crust, I used Mark Bittman’s Pizza Dough recipe, making modifications so it was a whole wheat crust (per Bittman) and because I can’t seem to follow directions (which turned out nicely anyway).

Bittman recommends using your food processor for making the dough. Turns out, the food processor makes making dough about a billion times easier than it would be otherwise. Such a wise man that Mark Bittman.

The dough had to spend 1-2 hours rising for the first time. What was I to do?  I made homemade pizza sauce.

At the last minute, I added in some chipotle peppers thinking that the smoky flavor would bring out the nuttiness of the whole crust. Turned out I was right.

Pizza sauce simmering, I prepared the other toppings.  We used fresh mozzarella, but the pictures didn’t turn out so great.

I’m such a good pescatarian wife – look what I bought for my carnivore husband.

Humanely raised sopressata, untreated by antibiotics. (A trade off he doesn’t care much about, even if I do.) (By the way, don’t click that link unless you want to see salami being made.)

We live in Texas, where jalapenos are almost state law. We had to include them on the pizza.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Meanwhile, after the dough spent all that time rising, I divided it up and threw half in the freezer for future pizza nights.  Graham missed a large part of kindergarten, so he says he doesn’t know how to share. I made him his own little pizza so he didn’t have to learn.

Graham’s is on the left, mine is on the right.  What you can’t see here is that his is twice as big as mine.

We put ‘em in the oven, where they baked for ~11 minutes.  By this point, it was after 8 pm – we were starving, so we didn’t wait for the pizzas to cool.

When we were in Wisconsin in November, Graham’s Grandma Sis gave us a new pizza cutter. I think it looks a bit like PacMan, but damn it works well.

Even better? You can pull the white disc out of the blue case for super easy cleaning. Brilliant! Such good usability!

The verdict?

G: “It’s not a bad wheat crust. It’s not cardboard like most of them are.”

A: “Holy my god it takes a long time to make these.  But the results… They’re probably worth it. Thank goodness I froze more than half the dough so we don’t have to wait this long again.”

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s “Whole Wheat Pizza Dough” in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups bread flour
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for work surfaces
• 2 tsp. active yeast
• 2 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1.5 cups filtered water, at room temp.
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for oiling the rising bowl

Method:

1. In a food processor fitted with the dough attachment, combine dry ingredients.  Add water and olive oil through the tube feeder.  Process until combined and slightly sticky. If the dough is too sticky, add a teaspoon of whole wheat flour until desired consistency.  If the dough is too dry, add a teaspoon of water until it reaches desired consistency.
2. Move dough to a floured work surface, knead by hand and form a ball.
3. Coat the inside of a metal bowl with olive oil. Place dough ball in bowl and cover with a towel or plastic wrap.  Let dough rise in dark location (I used a turned off, empty oven) for 1-2 hours. (I did 1.25 hrs. Ideally the dough should double in size.)
4. When the dough is ready, divide on a floured work surface.  Form balls, then gently flatten into desired shape by pressing from the center out.  The desired thickness is between .25″-.34″.
5. Again cover dough and let rise for ~20 minutes.  (There’s no need to move to another location.)
6. When the dough is ready, move to a pizza stone and add ingredients.  Bake in oven preheated to 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Chipotle Pizza Sauce

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s “Fast Tomato Sauce” in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  The pizza sauce can be juicy; I recommend using a slotted spoon to drain juices before adding pizza sauce to crust.

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 med yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 2 chipotle peppers, sliced in half with loose seeds removed
• large pinch sea salt
• freshly ground pepper to taste

?Method:

1. In a medium sauce plan, heat olive oil.  Add onion and saute until soft.
2. Add diced tomatoes and chipotle pepper.
3. Bring mixture to a simmer for 25 minutes, then remove chipotle pieces.  Salt and pepper to taste.