How do you make cinnamon rolls rise evenly?
Use Room-Temperature Ingredients
Yeast likes a warm environment, so using eggs and butter at room temperature will keep the dough at the perfect temperature for optimal yeast activity. Plus, room-temperature butter will also mix easier and more evenly into the dough.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake rolls in the preheated oven until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes.
After approximately 30 minutes, test for doneness. Use a paring knife or fork to pull up the center-most roll; if the dough is still sticky and raw-looking, return the pan to the oven for about ten more minutes. The rolls should be golden to dark brown on top, and fully baked in the center of the coil.
Your cinnamon roll dough should be tacky to the touch, but not too sticky so that it's messy. If you add too little flour, the dough will be gluey and eventually result in dense rolls. If you add too much flour, the dough will be tough, resulting in dry rolls.
To knead cinnamon roll dough, fold the dough over and push down with the heel of your hand. Turn, fold dough over, and push down again. Repeat this process over and over. You know the dough is ready when it is smooth and elastic.
Baking temperature
Some ovens run hotter than its settings, some cooler. If the oven is too hot the loaf will be brown and crispy on the outside but doughy in the middle and may collapse as it cools. When bread is baked at too low a temperature it will not rise enough in the oven resulting in a dense and sunken loaf.
Whatever size you use, make sure all buns are touching.
Step two is to bake at 350°F for about 30 minutes, until the buns have inflated a little. When done, “they should be a beautiful golden brown on top,” says Chang. Once out of the oven, let the buns cool for 5 minutes, then ice your cinnamon buns.
Either pan will work great, it just depends on what end result you want. Adjust the temperature if you're using a glass vs metal baking dish. Reduce baking temperature by 25 degrees and check the cinnamon rolls up to ten minutes earlier if you are substituting a glass dish for a metal cake pan.
The cinnamon roll dough has to rise twice. Once after you form the dough and once after you cut the dough into cinnamon rolls. Find a warm place in your house so the dough can rise nicely and cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel.
When the oven is ready, place the rolls on the middle rack and bake until golden brown, or until the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, approximately 30 minutes.
Do cinnamon rolls need to be covered when rising?
2nd Rise: Cover the rolls tightly and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour. (Or use the overnight option below.) Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Bake for about 25-28 minutes or until they are lightly browned on top.
The addition of heavy cream makes these cinnamon rolls extra moist and fluffy, and the butter, cinnamon and brown sugar give them a fantastic flavor. They're also super quick and easy to make, which is always a bonus.

5 – Don't Overknead the Dough
A common reason why cinnamon rolls end up tough and bready is overworking or overkneading the dough. It's necessary to knead the dough for cinnamon rolls a little, but you can do this in the stand mixer if you're using it to combine the ingredients, and it won't take long.
Can cinnamon roll dough rise too long? You can leave these in your refrigerator for up to 24 hours without baking. As long as they are in the refrigerator they shouldn't rise too long.
After kneading the dough for several minutes, press it with your finger. If the indentation stays, the dough still needs more work. If it springs back to its original shape, your dough is ready to rest.
If you think you've over-kneaded the dough, try letting it rise a little longer before shaping it. You can't really undo the damage of over-worked gluten, but the longer rise can get the dough to relax a little. Loaves made with over-kneaded dough often end up with a rock-hard crust and a dense, dry interior.
Bread that Falls or Collapses Can Be Caused By:
Too much liquid – Try decreasing water or milk by one to two tablespoons. Remember to look at your dough after a few minutes of kneading and see if it's a smooth, round ball. If the dough is too dry add liquid a teaspoon at a time until the dough balls up.
The good news: We found an easy way to rescue overproofed dough. Simply punch it down gently, reshape it, and let it proof again for the recommended amount of time. In the test kitchen, these steps resulted in bread that tasters found acceptable in both texture and flavor. 1.
Just a few teaspoons of flour in the filling can do wonders to bind everything together and ensure a gorgeous swirl. The solution is simple. Add a stabilizer like all-purpose flour or Instant ClearJel to your filling to keep it in place and prevent the sugar from completely liquefying.
Finally, growing two times is helping to save you the formation of huge air wallet within the dough, which may make the bread difficult. So, even though it is going to appear counterintuitive, letting dough upward push two times is in truth very important for making nice bread. Baking is a precise science.
Do you cover rolls while rising?
Keep the bread dough covered to protect the dough from drying out and keep off dust. Place your rising dough in a warm, draft-free place in the kitchen while it's rising.
Pizza dough that has been left to rise for too long, or has been over-proofed, can potentially collapse. The gluten becomes overly relaxed, and the end product will be gummy or crumbly instead of crisp and fluffy.
I recommend using a 9×9 inch baking pan or 9-inch circular pan so that the cinnamon rolls fit well and bake properly.
Too much yeast could cause the dough to go flat by releasing gas before the flour is ready to expand. If you let the dough rise too long, it will start having a yeast or beer smell and taste and ultimately deflate or rise poorly in the oven and have a light crust.
Here's what you do: Using whatever frosting or icing your rolls call for (cream cheese, all butter, even the sleeve of icing from the canned variety), coat the rolls once when they are hot from the oven. The icing will melt into all the nooks and crannies.
BAKING DIRECTIONS
PREP – Spray pan with cooking spray. Place frozen rolls evenly on pan and cover with plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray to keep from sticking to rolls while rising. BAKE – Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Carefully remove plastic wrap.
Simply heat the oven to 400° F (or 375° F for a nonstick pan), place the rolls in a greased round pan with the cinnamon top up, bake for 13–17 minutes or until golden brown, and spread the delicious icing on top. Nothing wakes up a day like an oven-fresh cinnamon roll.
Line the baking dish with parchment paper. Use a serrated knife to gently saw the log into 8 cinnamon rolls. Arrange the rolls in the prepared dish. Cover the dish tightly with plastic wrap and let the rolls rise for 2 hours.
The liquid was too hot, or not hot enough.
The water temperature should be between 110 - 115 F degrees. If your liquid is too hot (i.e. boiling) it will kill the yeast and prevent the rise. If it's not hot enough, the yeast won't have the heat needed to bloom.
In the first section, she covers the basics of measuring, kneading, and proofing, and now shaping those loaves. After the dough has risen (aka proofed), the dough needs some handiwork before a second rise. Once dough has risen to double its size, it must be pressed down or turned to prevent it from overproofing.
Can you use white sugar instead of brown sugar for cinnamon rolls?
Sugar: If you prefer, you can use all white OR all brown sugar for the filling. All brown will yield a more caramel-like taste. All white will make the filling sweeter. Milk: I prefer whole milk for a richer dough, but feel free to use any fat percentage you have at home.
Dense or heavy bread can be the result of not kneading the dough mix properly –out of many reasons out there. Some of the other potential reasons could be mixing the yeast & salt together or losing your patience while baking or even not creating enough tension in the finished loaf before baking the bread.
Temperature matters
Nail the sweet spot — warm enough to rise at a decent rate, yet cool enough to develop flavor — and you're golden. Studies have shown that the optimum temperature for yeast to grow and flavor to develop is 75°F to 78°F.
- Heat on a microwave safe plate for 45 seconds. Optional: Place a damp paper towel in the microwave to help keep roll soft.
- Check temperature and continue to reheat in 15 second intervals until cinnamon roll is hot.
Another option for proofing cinnamon roll dough is letting it rise overnight in the refrigerator. A cold fermentation process means the yeast releases carbon dioxide more slowly, which results in a more complex, robust flavor. You can try this method with our Overnight Cinnamon Rolls.
They use one secret ingredient that entices every customer to buy one of their delicious desserts: cinnamon. Psst: Here's how to make our Cinnabon copycat at home. Clearly cinnamon isn't a secret ingredient in the recipe for cinnamon rolls, but it's the type of cinnamon they use that's key. They call it Makara.
The Center of the Roll consists of bite-sized pieces of baked sweet dough featuring Makara Cinnamon and brown sugar, and smothered with cream cheese frosting.
For best results, the dough should be defrosted and proofed before baking. Once you're ready to bake, simply place each cinnamon roll on a baking sheet and bake in a 325 degree Fahrenheit convection oven until they are golden brown. Cinnamon rolls can be served warm as a part of a breakfast or dessert menu.
It's not a necessary step, but it's a nice touch that boosts the flavor.) Let the pull-apart rolls rise a final time before baking as directed in your recipe. They may bake slightly faster than a full pan of cinnamon rolls so check for doneness about 5 minutes early.
Cinnamon bun dough should be tacky to the touch, but not so sticky that it's very messy. It should pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl easily and the bowl should appear fairly clean.
Do cinnamon rolls have to rise twice?
The cinnamon roll dough has to rise twice. Once after you form the dough and once after you cut the dough into cinnamon rolls. Find a warm place in your house so the dough can rise nicely and cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel.
Adding 2 tablespoons instant dry milk powder per loaf of bread will help your bread rise higher, stay soft, and hold the moisture longer. That means it won't get stale as quickly. Dry milk powder creates a more golden brown crust and improves nutrition, too.
Knowing When To Stop Kneading. Kneading for 10-12 minutes by hand or 8-10 minutes in a mixer are the general standards; if you've been massaging the dough for that length of time, you can be pretty confident that you've done your job.
When you cut into an over kneaded dough, you will notice that the interior is very dry and crumbly. The slices will likely fall apart rather than holding their shape. While the general taste of the bread may be the same, it will not have a nice mouth feel but, again, be dry, dense and crumbly- no thank you!
Under Kneading
Instead of rising, the dough will spread out flat. The dough may even fall back onto itself and collapse as the gases produced by the yeast escapes. Once baked, an under-kneaded bread loaf will be flat and dense in texture.
It means to let your dough rest (I give it 25-30 minutes) before kneading. This allows the flour to become thoroughly saturated, and provides time for the gluten chains to start forming up before you even lay a hand on the dough — more pre-kneading. Following that, it's an easy 5 to 7 minutes — that's all!
The longer you let your bread rise, the more sugar alcohols are developed, giving your bread a better, yeasty flavor. Seven facts about yeast that will make you a better baker.
After kneading the dough for several minutes, press it with your finger. If the indentation stays, the dough still needs more work. If it springs back to its original shape, your dough is ready to rest.
When large air pockets develop in the dough it creates rolls that are misshapen, which causes them to brown unevenly when baking. Over rising is a recipe for disaster, so if you want uniform cinnamon buns that stay in the pan while baking, only rise for 20 minutes the second time.
Over kneading will over develop the gluten in the flour making a tough structure that will pull the dough together once the steam is gone from the loaf. Knead only until the dough is smooth, shiny, and pliable. Over raising will make the bread's framework too fragile and it will collapse as it cools.
Why did my rolls rise and then fall?
Bread that Falls or Collapses Can Be Caused By:
Too much liquid – Try decreasing water or milk by one to two tablespoons. Remember to look at your dough after a few minutes of kneading and see if it's a smooth, round ball. If the dough is too dry add liquid a teaspoon at a time until the dough balls up.
Mix just enough.
If you over mix or over knead your cinnamon roll dough, it will become tough after baking. Mix it together gently with a spatula and knead by hand for just about 2 minutes.
How many sets of folds are needed? There's no single answer for how many sets your dough needs. If you hand-mix your dough, two to four sets should do it. Of course, the type of flour and hydration in a recipe also play a big role in answering this question.
If it holds its shape, then it's ready for the next step. After the second rise, however, a baker is looking for the dough to spring back at her slowly when she pokes it. The second proving has given the bread more elasticity, and made it harder to deflate the air.
Thirty minutes seems to be the right time for most doughs to relax and spread out in the bulk fermentation container—precisely when you want to give it another set. However, if you've minimally mixed or kneaded the dough, and the dough is very slack and weak, you might need only 10 to 15 minutes rest between sets.
If you have over fermented your dough, or it's over proofed in the fridge, it's best not to score it before placing it in the oven. When you score over proofed dough, it will deflate like a balloon. Not scoring it will allow the dough to retain the gas bubbles that have formed.
Then proceed with rolling it out. The dough should be 1/8" thick and 1" wider than the pie plate. Here's a pro tip on measuring the dough's thickness: stack two quarters next to the dough.
By chilling the dough before rolling it out, we allow the present gluten strands time to settle down and relax. This actually makes your pastry dough easier to roll out and cuts down on any shrinking during the baking process. Chilling also lets the available moisture find its way back into all parts of the dough.
Yeast is too hot Yeast may have been dissolved in water that was too hot, or the liquid ingredients in the recipe may be too hot, causing the yeast to die. Yeast needs to be warm - not too hot, not too cold. Yeast is too cold If the other ingredients are too cold, it could cause some of the yeast to die.
If your dough isn't sticky but is slipping around your work surface, a small spritz of water on the table can help keep it in place. Remember when adding both flour and water: less is more!
How much do you let bread rise before baking?
Most recipes call for the bread to double in size – this can take one to three hours, depending on the temperature, moisture in the dough, the development of the gluten, and the ingredients used. Generally speaking, a warm, humid environment is best for rising bread.