Recipe: Gooey, Whole Wheat Sourdough Maple Cinnamon Rolls

Just out of the oven!

So, these are a little invention of mine since we are no longer eating yeast breads and refined sugar. They are still pretty high in sugar, so don’t fool yourself into thinking they are diet or diabetic food, but they do serve the purpose of: 1) not making me buy refined sugar (which would probably develop a voice and call to me from my pantry, “Sarah, I’m lonely, bake me into cookies or at the very least, mix me with lemons and tequila!” and 2) keeping my taste buds tuned to natural sugars, rather than refined sugar; and 3) allowing me to indulge in a sweet while controlling the amount of sugar that goes in—just enough maple syrup to sweeten, no powdered stuff dissolved into liquid to help me get more sweet than I bargained for in each bite. So, here’s a recipe. Like many of my recipes, it doesn’t have measurements and just calls for you to wing it. Experiment. Be willing to fail. Enjoy cooking and tasting!

Ingredients:

Whole wheat sourdough bread dough—not yet allowed to rise

Butter (at room temp)

Cinnamon

Maple syrup

Currants (about a cup, maybe a cup and a half but I use my hands as a cup, so I can't say)
Walnuts

Roll bread dough into a flat, wide sheet. (How much dough just depends on how much you have and how many you are making. I tend to make bread and reserve some of the dough for a batch.) Spread butter over the sheet. Smooth on a thin layer of maple syrup. Sprinkle with a generous covering of cinnamon. Sprinkle with currants and walnuts. (Leave walnuts and/or currants out if you like… or if you are serving a picky eater). Roll from widest side until you have one long rope. Cut in the center to have two ropes. Cut each piece in center again, and again, until you have pieces that are about one and a half to two inches. Place in a buttered baking dish, about an inch apart. Allow to rise for about 4 to 12 hours, or until puffed up and touching. Sprinkle on a few more walnuts to fill in the spaces and to help keep any sugar on the pan from burning. Drizzle maple syrup over top until it pools slightly in the bottom of pan. Bake at 350 until brown. (You can usually tell when bread is done by its smell, but that takes practice. Pay attention the first several times you do this and you will find that you start to recognize the aroma that means it’s time to remove from oven.) My best estimate on time is that it will take 30 to 40 minutes, but again, it depends on so many factors that it’s best to check in with it while it bakes, and especially towards the thirty minute mark.

These taste particularly good with my homemade cream cheese, sweetened with a touch of maple syrup and cinnamon.