TWD Pecan Sticky Buns and Brioche

Butter, Butter!
He's our man!
If he can't do it,
no one can!

If in doubt just look at the recipe for Pecan Sticky Buns from Baking with Julia.  The entire recipe uses 6 sticks of butter and it makes only 14 buns.  That is 3 1/2 tablespoons of butter per bun.  You know if a recipe has that much butter it has to be good.  Well, that is my assumption anyway.  My son has had and upset belly for almost a week now and I think it would definately put me in the worst mother category to make pecan sticky buns and not let him have any.  So I made a log of sticky buns and stuck it in the freezer to be cooked and enjoyed once everyone in our family will be healthy enough to eat it.

I did however make a brioche loaf with the other half of the dough.  I love brioche!  Oh so yummy.  If this is the base of the sticky buns I am sure that it will taste great.


A few notes about the brioche dough.  The only other tie I have made brioche it was Dori Greenspans recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours.  The BWJ recipe says to pound the butter until it is soft before you add it to the dough, whereas Dori's recipes just has you add softened butter.  I was lazy and didn't want to pound it so I just added it as Dori recommends.  Would it have tasted better if I pounded it?  I will probably never know because I will probably always be too lazy to pound my butter.  It's been a while since I have made Dori's brioche so I can't really say which one tastes better. I think I liked Dori's better but it could be just my memory.  In the future I might do a combination of recipes just to make it easier and more to my taste.

As soon as I bake the sticky buns I will review them, and post it here.  In the mean time if you just can't wait go to Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat or Cookies on Friday, to get the recipe.

Update:  It took more than a week to get everyone healthy enough to eat these.  You know how it is.  When one person gets sick it never stays with only one person.  I pulled the log of dough out of the freezer in the morning and let it defrost in the refrigerator all day.  That night I sliced it up to put it in the pan.  The first thing I noticed when I took the plastic wrap off was that some of the egg (I presume) had leaked out and made a bit of a gooey mess.  I was worried but I just wiped it off and kept going.  It ended up not making a difference in the end.  I let the buns rise in the refrigerator overnight and baked them in the morning.

After reading may other posts about the sticky buns I used a little less butter in the pan.  I am glad I did because when I turned out my sticky buns there was still melted butter (as opposed to caramel sauce) that dripped from the pan.

Final conclusions:  I loved the layers in the brioche dough.  I loved picking it apart eating it one layer at a time.  I think I will try using brioche dough in my future rolled confections.  I was underwhelmed by the rest of the recipe however.  The cinnamon sugar filling was only about a fourth of the amount I would normally use and you couldn’t even really notice that it was there (except for the pecans that my son so dutifully picked out).  The topping ended up more of melted butter and melted brown sugar as opposed a cohesive sauce.  I still ate three of them mind you, but this recipe won’t make it into my list of recipes to make again.