Pumpkin Pie Brioche Sticky Buns

Before I inadvertently threw myself into the food blogging world, I had what I thought was an epiphany. "What if... I made pumpkin bread — but not like regular pumpkin bread. One made with YEAST. I'm a genius!" I think I even jotted a note in my ever-present idea notebook. Yep, I just found it. It says:
Bread Ideas
   Jalapeno bread
   Yeast Pumpkin Bread

And then I found out that I was not, in fact, the first person to ever come up with such a brilliant plan—for either of them. Yeast pumpkin bread existed long before I thought of it, and while it did put a damper on my illusions of genius, it didn't make me less enthusiastic about the concept.

It wasn't until I saw the words "Pumpkin Pie Brioche" that I finally thought, "That's it. That's the one I'm going to make" and proceeded to drool all over my keyboard as I looked at some of the recipes made with said dough.

I've talked about Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day before, but Zoë and Jeff didn't stop there. They teamed up again to create Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day which was released last month. I had my copy pre-ordered as soon as I saw the announcement on the ABin5 website and received it the day of the release. Michele, fellow BBA baker over at Big Black Dogs, decided to create a HBinFive baking group. I still haven't decided if I'm going to join. They officially start baking after the first of the year, but in the mean time, Zoë and Jeff are releasing 2 new recipes to tide the challenge folks over. Pumpkin Pie Brioche is the recipe for November. You can find it here.

I mixed up half a batch the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, planning to use part for a Thanksgiving breakfast treat for Dwight and me.




According to the recipe, the dough will be "loose" but will firm up in the fridge. Well, it was still VERY loose when I used it Wednesday night. I had to use a lot of flour to get it out of the plastic container and a lot of flour when rolling it out. It was incredibly slack. I covered the rolled out dough with cinnamon sugar then carefully, with the aid of my scraper and lots of flour, rolled into a log, sealing the ends.

Instead of a knife, I used thread to cut the log into rolls. It works great in general, but was especially helpful with this dough. You slide the thread under the roll, criss-cross the ends over the top, then pull through the dough creating a nice, clean cut.





I placed the rolls on top of the prepared caramel glaze in a jumbo muffin tin.





I used the BBA recipe for the caramel glaze, the same I used to make the amazing BBA sticky buns. I halved it because I was only making a half-dozen rolls, but realized too late that I should make a full recipe. The small amount of ingredients in my large Kitchen Aid mixer didn't mix quite right. Here's what it should look like — nice and whipped:




But this time, it was quite heavy:




The flavor was still great, so no harm, just a lesson in the limitations of my KA mixer. Here's the recipe:




Ingredients
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract (or other flavor of choice)

Directions
Cream butter, sugars and salt for 2 minutes on high speed with paddle attachment. Add corn syrup and extract and cream until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Cover the bottom of jumbo muffin tins or baking dish with approximately 1/4" layer of mixture. Then sprinkle with chopped pecans and dried cranberries, if you so choose.




I covered the pan and put it in the fridge overnight. I pulled the pan out when I got up and let it warm up for about an hour or so before baking at 350°F for about 20-25 minutes.



I turned them out onto another pan after about 5 minutes and let the caramel glaze cover the turned out buns.



After a tough 20 minute wait, I gave them taste. Delicious!



These are best eaten right away. I had one the following day, and while it tasted good, it wasn't the nicest looking roll. Dwight actually said, "What is THAT? Oh, the cinnamon roll." They don't age well.

With all of the other flavors going on, it was a bit difficult to tell what the dough tasted like, but one of the rolls had more bread than cinnamon sugar. I have to be honest and say that it didn't taste anything like brioche. It tasted like a very soft and somewhat gooey whole grain bread. Not bad, but not brioche. It worked great for sticky buns, but I can't see just eating a slice of this bread. Michele at Big Black Dogs made French Toast. I can definitely see using it that way! Basically, this dough needs to be made into something other than just a loaf, at least in my opinion. I just made monkey bread with it (post to come) and it was incredible. Even better than the sticky buns.

Give it a shot! The HBinFive method is SUPER simple.

Some other posts using this dough:
Bread Pudding (Yes, please)
Gorgeous Traditional Brioche
A whole new twist on the usual Pumpkin Roll