BBA Challenge, Cinnamon Heaven

You would not believe the amount of photos and recipes I have stashed away waiting to be blogged about! I have been baking, but the problem is that typing one-handed is a frustrating business. My little Westley likes to eat--constantly--and when he's not eating he wants to be held most of the time. He's a very well-behaved baby, but he's very affectionate. Not a bad thing at all, although it's as much as I can do to keep my other two children in food and clean clothes.
Most of my time is spent trying to do things one-handed, or rushing through things when he's napping--or any variation of the two.
Long story short--I better make this quick! I made my Cinnamon Rolls for the Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge sometime last week, but I'm just now getting around to posting. The day before the DB post has to go up....
I found these to be pretty good. The dough wasn't super-enriched with tons of eggs like I have made before, (this recipe by Alton Brown is a good one) it was actually more like a dinner roll recipe. And as usual, I had to add a bunch of extra flour in addition to what the recipe called for.
You know, I keep making these recipes and keep questioning why he never uses autolyse, and rarely a sponge for enriched doughs. Autolyse is the rest you give the dough before you add the salt, practiced sometimes in breadmaking--it lets the flour hydrate better and you end up adding less flour. All of my own bread recipes utilize this useful step. I may veer off course on the next recipe--Cinnamon Swirl Bread--and give it a go. I'm tired of having to dump so much flour into these recipes!
Thinking back, I should have tried the Sticky Bun variation. I have had a cinnamon roll recipe I'm happy with for a long time now, and I see no reason to drop it for this one. It wasn't bad, just nothing spectacular. Homemade cinnamon rolls are always more delicious than any you can buy, however. And I think I realized this time that I have been overbaking my other batches slightly. Cinnamon rolls should be just underbaked, so that when they cool, they stay nicely soft and squashy, like the mall ones. It also helps to space them close together, so that when they bake they touch, giving you soft sides, instead of crisp outer edges all around. Granted, a perfectly round cinnamon roll with golden edges is a far prettier thing than a roll that's been pulled away from his neighbor--but taste the difference, you'll see why they get placed so closely together. To each his own.
Personally...I can't stand CinnaBon. I hate doughy, underbaked things--same reason I don't like Wetzel's Pretzels. Too gooey for me. I prefer to take my cinnamon rolls all the way to done, and then eat them immediately. But my husband insists they should be slightly gooey--again we disagree.
If you'd like to try this recipe, I'm not posting it here as per the rules of the Challenge, but I found it here on Ezra Poundcake.
And if you'd like to check in on the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, visit its creator at Pinch My Salt.