Dough!

I've been in the mood for cinnamon rolls lately - probably because of all the really good cinnamon I've gotten my hands on! You should smell our pantry! Anyhow, it'd been awhile (see the date: January 12th) since I'd last made Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls, and I hadn't tried making them again since freezing all the extra dough. I hauled two bags of the dough from the freezer and put them in a mixing bowl in the kitchen sink, filling it with hot water, which I replaced every 15 min or so with more hot water. After awhile, the dough thawed and, sure enough, started showing bubbly-signs of rising again. Cool!


While I was at it, I also decided to whip up a fresh batch of the 1-hour pizza dough from Cook's Illustrated, which I love. You dump the stuff into the food processor, and the action of the whirring blade both mixes AND heats up the dough, providing it encouragement to rise! After the two dough blobs sat on the counter for an hour, well, I couldn't resist fondling their voluptuous goodness!

Awwww yeah - you like that?!


Before I made the pizza I rolled out the two cinnamon roll blobs, spread on a mixture of softened butter, sugar, and Saigon cinnamon, rolled them up, sliced, and stashed them in pans to rise over the pre-heating oven.

Then the pizzas were made up and baked... Sure, the plain pepperoni pizza got a little greasy looking:


...but the other pizza was definitely the star of the show!! Now it might not LOOK like much (I'm willing to admit it wasn't very photogenic), but it tasted GREAT!

Remember all that fried chicken from earlier in the week? Well, I diced up a leftover fried breast and tossed it around in a bowl with Red hot wing sauce... After patting out the dough I drizzled on bleu cheese dressing, then sprinkled on a mixture of shredded colby jack and mozzarella cheese (this was not an occasion for fancy fresh mozzarella - sorry to disappoint!). Then I poured on the sauced up chicken, added a little more shredded cheese, a LITTLE more drizzled bleu cheese, and then any remaining hot wing sauce got drizzed on.


The dark spots are just the chicken breading that was already a bit dark - it got darker in the really hot oven. Didn't actually taste burned though.

Oh yeah - and the cinnamon rolls? Well, let's just say I was REALLY popular at work the next day! I think they were all gone not long after lunch time!!


Mmmm good!