Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls - Overnight Recipe (Video)
These easy sourdough cinnamon rolls will be your favorite cinnamon rolls in no time! They can be made the night before so you can quickly bake them fresh for breakfast in the morning, or you can bake them right away for a quick dessert. You can mix them up in a mixer, or just do some quick stretch and folds by hand. They can also be made with discard or active sourdough starter and they will turn out just fine. This is a very flexible recipe for soft and fluffy cinnamon rolls that you and your family are going to love! The best cinnamon rolls I've ever tasted have been made with sourdough. There's something about the slight tang of the sourdough combined with the sweet ribbons of brown sugar filling that makes these the absolute best cinnamon rolls you'll ever eat!
Ingredients
- 1 cup water or milk
- 1 cup sourdough starter
- ½ cup melted butter
- ½ cup sugar or honey
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 4-5 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder optional - only use if baking right away
- 1 teaspoon baking soda optional - only use if baking right away
- Cinnamon Sugar Filling
- ½ cup melted butter
- 1 ½ cups brown sugar
- 2 Tbl. cinnamon
- Topping Options:
- Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
- 8 oz. cream cheese
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup maply syrup
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Classic Cream Cheese Frosting
- 8 oz. cream cheese
- ¼ cup butter
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 2-3 Tablespoons milk can add more to make a thinner frosting
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- Leftover coffee optional - Add 2-3 Tablespoons to give the frosting the best flavor.
Instructions
- In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine first six ingredients.
- If using a mixer, start mixing on low and slowly add the flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
- If you’re not using a mixer, add the flour to the other ingredients in the bowl and knead until the dough comes together into a nice ball. Stretch and fold or knead the dough every 15-30 minutes for a couple hours. This will develop the gluten similar to how the mixer develops it by mixing.
- Combine the filling ingredients in a small bowl.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough using a rolling pin to ¼” thick in the shape of a rectangle.
- Spread the filling ingredients on the dough (see video).
- Roll dough up beginning with the long side of the rectangle.
- Using a sharp serrated knife, cut rolls into approximately 1 ½” lengths.
- Place in a greased cast iron skillet or baking dish.
- Cover with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap and let the dough rise on the counter overnight. If you need to wait longer than overnight to bake them, place them in the refrigerator, and pull them out to finish raising a couple of hours before baking.
- You can also freeze the cinnamon rolls at this point, and take them out of the freezer to raise and bake later on.
- When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
- For cream cheese frosted cinnamon rolls, just bake them as they are.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
- While the rolls are baking mix up the cream cheese frosting (instructions below).*
- Remove from the oven and spread frosting over warm rolls.
- Serve warm with a cup of coffee or tea from Farmhouse Teas.
- Savor every bite! Store any leftovers in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to one week, although I know they'll never last that long.
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting:
- Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat just until warm. Blend with an immersion blender to fully combine.
Classic Cream Cheese Frosting:
- In a medium sized bowl, mix all ingredients with a hand mixer until well combined and fluffy.
Notes
Tips
- To gain all of the health benefits from making these with long-fermented sourdough, be sure to allow them to bulk ferment at room temperature overnight. This will ensure that most of the phytic acid and gluten in the flour are consumed by the sourdough starter making these much easier to digest especially if you are gluten intolerant.
- If your sourdough starter is really thin, you may need to add a little more flour to this recipe. I always mix them until they dough pulls away from the sides of my mixer bowl, or until it’s not super sticky if mixing up by hand.
- You can mix these in a mixer (my favorite is a Bosch), or just mix up the dough and do a series of kneading or stretch and folds every few minutes for about an hour to develop the gluten in these rolls. Then just roll them out, shape and allow to rise until double and then bake.
- You can use string to cut the cinnamon rolls if you’d like, but I find that cutting them with a knife works just fine for my family.
- It is perfectly safe to add the eggs to this dough and still allow the dough to bulk ferment at room temperature overnight because the good active bacteria in the sourdough starter will prevent any bad bacteria from forming on the eggs.
