A Humble Flock: Christmas Unwrapped ~ Day 20

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

I used to make a lot of bread, and every time I made bread I'd use some of the dough to make homemade cinnamon rolls... soooo tasty!

A while ago I felt like I wasn't keeping up with everything in my life, so I did a priority check and cut some things out in order to make more precious time to be with my husband and sons. Making bread was one of the things I cut out. I miss my homemade bread now, but it took a lot of time to make, and there is a delicious bakery just down the road from us and it's much easier to buy bread from them. Plus it feels good to support nice people and their local business!

So along with cutting a few things out that were sucking up my time, I was also blessed to be able to cut back my hours at work starting at the end of October, and now I finally feel MUCH more balance between my home life and work life. And that makes for a happier Wife, Mom, Co-Worker, and Sister-in-Law!!!

Amen for that!

Anyway I got off on a tangent...
Sorry, back to the homemade cinnamon rolls :)

I really want to have my homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning next week, and the nice thing about making the rolls ahead of time is that you can freeze them, so it's super easy on the morning you want to eat them to pop them out of the freezer and warm them up in the oven while you whip up the frosting.

So the first step is to make the bread dough!

When I started making bread about 5 years ago I called my Mom-in-Law to get her recipe, because she is the ultimate pro at making homemade bread!
Over the years i've tweaked it and now it's exactly how I like it.
This is how my recipe goes:
*P.S. this makes A LOT of dough, enough for at least 6 medium-sized loaves of bread. You can easily cut the recipe in half, which is what I did for making these cinnamon rolls, but all the measurements that follow are for the full batch.

All you need is active yeast, wheat flour, white flour, salt, oatmeal, instant dry milk, and brown sugar.

Oh and of course a LARGE mixing bowl, and some warm tap water too!

Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of yeast over 6 cups of warm tap water.

Let the yeast do it's thang for a while... usually I wait at least 20-30 minutes.

Then you add 1 1/3 cups dry milk, 1 cup brown sugar, and 1 heaping tablespoon of salt.

Stir with a wire whisk.

Then I add approximately 2 cups of oatmeal (the Old Fashioned kind is better, and you can add more or less if you want), stir it again and then let it sit for 5-10 more minutes so the oats get a little softer.

Now start adding wheat flour and keep stirring with a wire whisk. I honestly don't know how much I add, because I just keep adding until it gets hard to stir with the whisk. It's probably around 4 cups of wheat flour.

Once you get to the point where the wire whisk can't quite keep up, switch to a wooden spoon and start adding white bread flour.

Keep adding white bread flour and stirring with the wooden spoon until you get to the point that you think the dough is "knead-able".

Sprinkle your work surface with some of the white flour, and then dump your dough out onto it.

Sprinkle some more flour on top of the dough and flour up your hands real good too!

The more flour the better in my opinion... bread dough is sticky!!!

Now knead, knead, knead!!!

I usually leave the dough right there on the counter while it's rising, and cover it with a light kitchen towel.

Let it rise until it's at least doubled in size, usually at least an hour but longer is better.

Here is where the recipe splits, depending on if you are going to make bread loaves, or make cinnamon rolls. There are lots of other things you can do with the bread dough too! You can experiment with the ingredients too, you could add wheat germ... you can make dinner rolls... just use your imagination and have fun with it, no matter what you do it will be delicious :)

If you're making cinnamon rolls, knead the dough out a few more times, flour up your work surface again, and then roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin.