The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

Rolling in Dough
Sticky buns are made with what is called an enriched dough,
meaning that in addition to the flour, water-based liquid,
salt, and leavener found in most doughs, you’ve also got fat
—in this case, eggs and butter; ingredients like milk and
yogurt provide both water and fat. The fat plays a vital role
not only in the flavor of the buns, but also in their texture. In
lean doughs made without fat, gluten formation is
exceptionally strong, because the flour proteins are easily
able to come into direct contact with one another, rapidly
forming a thick, sticky network of gluten. Because of this,
lean doughs tend to have larger air bubbles trapped in them
(stronger gluten means the dough can stretch longer and
thinner before bursting), as well as a tougher, chewier
structure. With enriched doughs, the fats act like a lubricant,
preventing proteins from bonding too tightly.
Think of flour proteins as a group of hippie revelers
forming a dance circle during a rare dry, sunny moment at
Woodstock 1969. As they run into each other, they clasp
each other’s hands (as hippies are wont to do). Eventually,
they’re all linked together quite tightly. The circle can
stretch out very far before any link breaks. Now let’s
imagine the same group of hippies in the same field, but this
time in the pouring rain. If coated, as they are, with mud and
water, clasping hands tightly becomes much more difficult.
Perhaps small circles form here and there, but they are
nowhere the size and strength of the dry circle. So it is with
fats: they prevent large hippie circles of flour from forming
in your dough, so to speak.
Because of this, enriched doughs tend to be more delicate