The Mistakes To Avoid When Baking Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls

It's a tragic sight to behold: You're baking a batch of gluten-free cinnamon rolls, filling your home with the most tantalizing aromas. With a ding of the timer, you take the tray out of the oven, only to discover that the rolls are deflated and unraveled, more resembling a pancake than a delicate pastry. Making gluten-free cinnamon rolls from scratch doesn't have to end in disappointment, but it does require a different game plan. To find out where so many bakers go wrong, we turned to Alysha Dinatale, a pastry chef at The Goddess and Grocer in Chicago, who's well-versed in the many quirks of gluten-free baking. "Gluten-free cinnamon rolls need a little more TLC," she said. That extra care starts with how the dough is handled.

Traditionally, cinnamon roll dough is rolled out thin to help create those beautiful, Instagram-worthy spirals. But for gluten-free baking, thinner isn't better, as gluten acts as a binder, holding dough together and allowing it to bend. "Gluten-free doughs don't have the same stretch as regular dough, so rolling them thicker helps them hold their shape without falling apart," Dinatale explained. She recommends flattening your dough to about one-quarter inch to help prevent the dough from tearing, a common occurrence with gluten-free dough. This thickness is essentially a perfect pastry Goldilocks Zone, as with a slightly-thicker dough, it's "sturdy enough to roll, but not so thick that they turn into hockey pucks," according to Dinatale.

Once you've rolled your dough into a beautiful coil shape and cut it into evenly-sized cinnamon rolls, it's tempting to toss them straight into the oven. But when working with gluten-free dough, not allowing it to rest before baking is one of the biggest mistakes to avoid as a gluten-free baker. According to Dinatale, "It helps them keep their shape and rise more evenly, so you're not pulling flat, sad rolls out of the oven."

The wait isn't significant (though it might feel like it when there's a full tray of cinnamon rolls right in front of you), only taking around 20 to 30 minutes uncovered at room temperature. The purpose of this resting period is to let the gluten-free flour catch its breath. As the dough sits, the starches in the flour start to relax, absorbing excess moisture. This helps the dough develop a wonderful shape and texture, and it won't be as dry when you bite into it. 

Since gluten-free flour doesn't have the same elasticity as wheat-based flour, the dough greatly benefits from getting the chance to stabilize before baking. During this time, the yeast also gets a chance to work its magic, making sure those iconic swirls puff up perfectly in the oven instead of collapsing under pressure. If you've ever had gluten-free cinnamon rolls shrink down after taking them out of the oven, you likely didn't give your dough enough time to rest.