How NYC’s Best Cinnamon Buns Are Made

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Hi, I am Miro Uskokovic,

owner and executive chef at Hani's Bakery in New York City.

And today we are here to make our perfect version

of Hani's Malted Cinnamon Bun.

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Hani's Bakery is modern American style bakery.

Oftentimes we have lines down the block

and we sell out pretty quickly.

Malted cinnamon bun is Hani's best seller.

Sometimes by the time you make it

to the front of the line, the cinnamon buns are gone.

It looks large and fluffy and moist

and has a lot of cinnamon

and like a gooey milky cream cheese glaze on top.

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Let's do the first step.

We are making the most important part of the cinnamon bun,

so we are adding cinnamon into this bun

in the form of a schmear

where we are mixing all of these ingredients together

so it'll be easier to spread on our dough.

So we want to mix dry ingredients first,

which is our dark brown sugar.

We can most definitely use a light brown sugar,

but dark brown sugar has a higher molasses

and it means just like a little bit more of that like

toffee caramely flavor.

A lot of cinnamon and AP flour.

I'm just gonna give it a quick mix.

[mixer whirring]

Okay, so now that all of the dry ingredients

are incorporated,

we are going to mix the Lyle Cane syrup,

which is like the second British byproduct

of processing sugar.

We add butter that we just slightly melted and let it cool.

Lyle syrup will add a little bit of the chewiness

and the moisture to the schmear.

Some recipes calls for addition

of corn syrup, which is great.

I find that Lyle's or cane syrup

has that like a buttery toffee flavor

that it plays very well

with the butter and with the cinnamon.

You know it is important

that your butter is neither too hard not too soft,

but it's like this beautiful tempered creamy texture.

I'm gonna turn it back on.

And we're just gonna mix it until it comes together.

So now we're gonna slowly start adding our eggs one by one.

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Okay, so our schmear is done and looks like frosting,

and that's what exactly you're looking for.

Now the schmear is ready,

we are gonna move on and we are gonna make our dough.

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And here at Hani's we are using a brioche dough.

We are not serving our bun warm,

we are serving them usually at room temperature.

So we want to make sure

that even when they're at the room temperature,

they're still like soft and fluffy and moist.

And you can achieve that by using enrich dough like brioche

that has a good amount of butter.

First thing we are going to is scale a flour.

We are using King Arthur special patent flour blend

which has about a 13% protein content.

It really gives you a nice structure like nice chewy dough.

Now we're going to add our eggs.

We are using white granulated sugar.

It's usually the best sugar to use when making dough

because it doesn't have molasses

which can alter and affect your yeast and the rise.

Whole milk.

As we are using fresh yeast, there's also dry yeast

and there's always a little bit argument

between the pastry chefs and bakers, which one is better.

I don't really think

that there is much flavor difference honestly,

I just feel the fresh yeast is a little bit more resilient

versus the dry yeast,

which I feel is a little bit more temperature sensitive.

So we're gonna mix our dough right now,

and we are holding off on adding salt and butter.

Salt will tighten the dough,

also affect the yeast as well,

and the butter will affect the formation of gluten.

So we're gonna first develop the structure

before we add those two ingredients.

So our dough is mixing right now,

it's gonna take about 10 to 15 minutes.

There are two different kinds of mixers.

There's the planetarium mixer,

which is kinda like an old purpose, can do doughs,

can do cakes, can do cookies.

But there's also something called a spiral mixer

or dough mixer, which is specifically designed

to make only dough,

and mixes the dough faster

and prevents dough from overheating

which can affect the yeast, and gluten formation,

as well as the texture.

Here we do not have that

because you know Hani's Bakery specializes

in multiple things, not just the dough.

That's why we are using a fresh yeast

because it's more resilient.

But we are also chilling our ingredients

for at least 30 minutes to an hour

and that will prevent the dough from overheating

and affecting the texture.

So in order to check the strength of our dough

and gluten formation,

we're going to do a window pane effect check,

which means we're gonna just stretch

a little piece of dough in between our fingers

and just see how elastic it is,

and you know it's taking a while to tear,

so that's a great thing.

We are going to add salt, butter.

We are now just gonna have this thing going for

next 10 to 15 minutes.

Our dough looks ready, it is pulling from the side.

Also looks nice, elastic and shiny.

So we're just gonna take it out of a mixer.

It is important to either put it on a silpad,

which is like non-stick pan liner,

or you can align your tray with a plastic rest spray

with a little bit of PAM spray,

and then just put your dough on there.

We are going to cover it with more plastic wrap

and we are going to bulk ferment this dough,

which means we're going to leave it in a bulk as it is

to sit at a room temperature

for about like an hour two.

This is where the flavor is gonna be built, the structure,

you know it's going to like double or triple on volume.

Okay, so it's been an hour

and you can see a difference in a dough.

It has risen, nearly doubled in volume.

Removing these gasses that have built up

during the bulk fermentation

is going to allow us to get rid of those like big bubbles

and create more like finer brioche dough.

Okay, so now that we have tightly wrapped this,

we're going to put it in a walk-in to sit overnight.

It's gonna build the flavor

but it's also going to build the structure

and it's gonna firm up

so it's easier for us to sheet it when the time comes.

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Okay, here is our dough that's been sitting

for about 12 hours.

Nice and chill.

So it's gonna be much more easier for us to sheet it.

So this is a commercial sheeter,

somebody calls it a roller.

What this is doing

is just essentially sheeting out the dough

to the thickens that you want.

At home you would just use a rolling pin.

If you go higher number, the dough is going to be thick

so you're not gonna have like

visually those beautiful spirals

that you would if you go thinner.

Also, if you go too thin it might end up being too tough

and like too much schmear and become like moist and gooey.

Now that we have finished sheeting our dough,

we are going to put it in a freezer

for at least an hour so it firms up.

So the shmear and rolling part is easier for us to achieve.

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Our sheet of dough has chilled

so now we are going to apply our schmear.

Just wanna spread it in like nice

and even amount all around.

And that's it.

And now we're gonna start rolling it.

So always the beginning is a little bit harder,

especially if your dough gets soft

and starts sticking to the parchment paper,

but after that initial roll it just gets easier.

You wanna roll it tight, not too tight,

you wanna make sure that there's enough room to expand.

And we're gonna put it in a freezer

for a few hours

until it is practically frozen,

and that's gonna allow us

for like easier slicing and a better shape.

So we are using this like a handy tool

that a lot of bakers and pastry chef use,

which is called a bicycle cutter.

But we are just using it for scoring.

If you do not have a bicycle cutter score,

you just use a ruler, just bit old fashioned rulers.

It's very important that all of your cinnamon buns

are uniform so they are baking at an even rate

and also you wanna ensure

that every customer gets the same size.

So now that I've marked my buns,

I just use good old knife.

And this is why freezing is essential

because it cuts easier and cleaner.

So we like to bake them in individual molds

rather than baking them together

just to make sure they're all even,

you can most definitely bake them in 13 by nine inch pan.

Some people really love the like super like gooey

and like soft middle of the cinnamon bun bake.

So we're using these plexiglass molds from Matfer.

and you want to use something that has the bottom

so that it catches all the goeyness

and schmear that could potentially leach on the bottom.

These are non-stick.

I'm gonna cover them with a plastic wrap.

We will put in a mold while it's still frozen

and then around 9:00 PM every night

we will pull those frozen buns in a mold

and let 'em sit at room temperature at about 70 degrees.

So they will slowly defrost and proof.

So by the time the first team is in at 5:00 AM

they'll be ready to go in in the oven.

We're gonna take these trays in our kitchen

and then we're gonna put it in a speed rack

and let it proof.

Our buns are ready.

The way to check is we just wanna like slightly press it.

If it's like bouncing back slowly with like a little indent,

that means that it is ready.

We are using Rational iCombi oven.

So you can either like cook with a hot air,

or you can steam, or you can do both.

And it really gives us a beautiful puff rise,

makes like a nice crust that it's not too crusty,

it's nice and soft,

and also keeps the buns super moist.

You can most definitely

just like use your regular home oven,

which is just a dry heat.

Sure you can like spray a little bit of water

or like add a little bit of water on the bottom

to try to mimic the Combi oven,

but you know, if you're just baking it

at the regular hot air,

it won't be as moist and fluffy

and it might create like a thicker crust,

which again will prevent it from rising and fluffing up.

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And now buns are done.

We're gonna let it cool down for a little bit

before we apply the malted glaze on top.

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Next step I feel is probably

the everybody's most favorite part of the cinnamon bun

and that is the glaze on top.

I usually find like two types of glaze

that most people use,

either it's cream cheese frosting,

which is kinda like thick and fluffy,

or it's like a runny, sugary glaze

and we wanted to kinda combine both.

So we're just using good old Philadelphia cream cheese,

full fat always.

And we are gonna paddle this just a little bit

to make it creamy.

So we are adding powder sugar.

Okay, so at this point

we practically have a cream cheese frosting.

You know, we can just like rip this further

until like it's light and fluffy.

But as I mentioned earlier,

we wanna make it a little bit like looser

and gooey and anxious.

So we're gonna continue to add some other ingredients.

And we're just using regular kosher salt

so the salt will kind of help balance that sweetness.

A little bit of vanilla extract.

I'm a huge fan of malted milk powder

or just like malt flavor in general,

which kind of gives it that like barley toffee,

buttery, slightly caramely flavor.

If you're not familiar with malted milk powder,

sometimes it's also called ovaltine.

It's essentially dry milk that has barley malt added to it

for I guess extra nutrition, but also extra flavor as well.

Malted milk powder is really what makes our glaze special.

We have a little touch of nutmeg there

just to kind of amp up

and kind of tie all those flavors together.

The last ingredient we're gonna add

is just a whole milk,

that's gonna give it like a little bit of the richness,

but also a beautiful sheen to the glaze.

So we make the glaze usually a day before

just to allow for the malted milk powder to hydrate

and melt into a glaze.

And we wanna mix it until everything is like creamy,

homogenous and there are no like lumps.

Okay, so this is done.

We're gonna let this rest overnight,

but we already made some yesterday.

So we are gonna continue with our next step.

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This is the most exciting part,

which is glazing our buns.

But we're gonna first take them out of the molds

and put 'em directly on deli paper

because we wanna make sure

that all of the sticky glaze is contained.

We are using just a cookie scoop

to put our glaze on top,

again to make sure that it's nice and consistent.

Use back of the scoop just to spread it around

and let it kind of drape and fall down.

This is almost four ounces of glaze on top.

What we were looking for at the end

when it came to glaze

is just again, that there is like a generous amount of it

that you can get it in every single bite,

but also we wanted it to be like nice and shiny

and also sticky.

We didn't want it to like get like fully,

like hard like a frosting.

We wanted to like maintain it like a goeyness

even if you take it home

and eat it like two, three hours later.

And if you do take it home to eat it later,

we do suggest pop it in the microwave for like 10 seconds

and it brings it to really next level.

We are finally here.

Our malted cinnamon bun is ready, so let's try it.

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You know, unless you need wet towels

after eating cinnamon buns, did you really eat cinnamon bun?

It's super soft, super fluffy, moist,

and glaze is gooey and anxious.

The cinnamon is like super strong and spicy

and like coming through despite all of the glaze.

In my opinion, this is perfect cinnamon bun.

And there's a reason why people stand in line.

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