Cinnamon rolls — made with pizza dough
Cinnamon rolls are pizza dough caught daydreaming about dessert: the same dough rolled flat, smeared with butter and cinnamon sugar, spiralled into a log and cut into pinwheels that bake up soft and sticky. It's the sweetest thing you can do with a ball of dough and a quiet Sunday.
Tell the page how many rolls you want and it weighs the dough to the gram — the calculator's own engine. These come out a touch chewier than a bakery's enriched roll, in the best pull-apart way; the swirl and the glaze do the rest.
How much dough
For 9 rolls, on New York dough — 70 g of dough a roll:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 9 rolls |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 371 g |
| Water | 63% | 234 g |
| Salt | 2.5% | 9.3 g |
| Olive oil | 2.5% | 9.3 g |
| Sugar | 1.5% | 5.6 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 0.8 g |
Making more or fewer? The dough scales straight off the count:
| Rolls | Total dough | Flour |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 350 g | 206 g |
| 9 | 630 g | 371 g |
| 14 | 980 g | 577 g |
| 18 | 1260 g | 742 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21 °C — set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
What else you’ll need
Beyond the dough — for 9 rolls:
- 60 g soft butter, for spreading
- 80 g light brown sugar
- 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 100 g icing sugar, for the glaze
- 1–2 tbsp milk (or soft cream cheese), to loosen the glaze
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 9 × 70 g pieces of New York dough — 371 g flour, 234 g water, 9.3 g salt and the yeast, weighed by the calculator for your schedule. (Leftover pizza dough works too.)
- Roll the dough out into one large rectangle about 1 cm thick, with a long edge facing you.
- Spread it all over with the soft butter, then scatter the brown sugar and cinnamon evenly to the edges.
- Roll it up snugly from the long edge into a tight log and pinch the seam closed.
- Cut the log into rolls about 4 cm wide — a length of thread slipped underneath and crossed over the top cuts them cleaner than a knife. Set them cut-side up in a buttered tin, not quite touching.
- Cover and prove 30–45 minutes, until puffy and just kissing their neighbours.
- Bake at 180 °C / 355 °F for 20–25 minutes, until golden and cooked through in the middle.
- Whisk the icing sugar with enough milk (or soft cream cheese) to make a pourable glaze, and spoon it over the rolls while they're still warm.
Questions from the counter
Can you really make cinnamon rolls from pizza dough?
Yes — it's the classic shortcut. A New York-style dough already carries a little oil and sugar, so it bakes tender, and the butter-and-cinnamon swirl does the sweetening. They come out a touch chewier and breadier than a bakery's enriched brioche roll, which is exactly the charm of the quick version.
How do I get them fluffier, like bakery rolls?
Enrich the dough: before the rise, knead in a knob of soft butter and a beaten egg and swap some of the water for milk. That moves it toward a brioche for a softer, cakier crumb — at the cost of the same-dough-as-your-pizza simplicity this page is built on.
Can I make them the night before?
Shape the rolls, cover the tin and refrigerate overnight; in the morning let them come up at room temperature for an hour while the oven heats, then bake. Baked rolls keep too — warm them briefly and glaze fresh.
Can I make them with Nutella instead?
Happily — skip the cinnamon sugar and spread the rolled-out dough with Nutella (warm it slightly so it spreads easily), then roll, cut and bake the same way. A scatter of chopped hazelnuts in the swirl makes them feel deliberate rather than improvised.
Get the dough
The New York preset weighs the batch and writes the schedule — mix, rise, shape, bake. Cinnamon rolls is what you do with it.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!