So I got up at 5am yesterday — as has become my routine on Fridays — to bake a massive batch of challah with Julie, Freedman’s bread and cake baker extraordinaire. Challah for 100 people — the risen dough fills a bowl you could take a bath in!

Except this time — the dough didn’t rise. After three hours in the hot kitchen (proofing oven? who needs a proofing oven? the whole kitchen is like a giant proofing oven!) and no dough action, despair set in, a hasty trip to the store for more flour was made, and we started over.

But the dough was still tasty sweet egg bread dough, and I was loathe to throw it all out. So I saved some, and this morning I made cinnamon twists. Kind of a cross between breadsticks and cinnamon buns, this was a very sweet way to salvage the unrisen dough.

Here’s how:

Roll out your dough on a floured surface to a rectangle about 8″ x 16″ (or however long your dough is).

Cover the surface with melted butter. Mix together 2 parts brown sugar to 1 part cinnamon, and sprinkle this liberally over the dough. You could probably add chopped & toasted walnuts or pecans to this also.

Cut your rectangle in 1″ wide strips (you want them kind of wide, so you see the full twist effect).

Twist gently and lay in a pan or baking sheet, and bake for however long you would have baked your challah minus 5-10 minutes or so.

Since they’ll be more chewy than puffy, they’re probably better served warm — but I have a feeling they’ll go pretty fast whenever you serve them.

Enjoy!