The day before baking vanilla cardamom cinnamon buns, feed your sourdough starter in the morning and leave it in a warm place to rise into a nice bubbly sourdough starter. The time it takes for your starter to reach a bubbly status will depend on the warmth of your kitchen.

That night or when your sourdough starter is nice and bubbly, mix up your dough by adding all dough ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer or large 5 quart mixing bowl. To ensure my cinnamon buns are nice and fluffy, I like to use a bubbly active sourdough starter.

Using a dough hook, turn the mixer to medium speed and knead until the dough comes together looking smooth and glossy. This should take about 5-7 minutes.

If you still have a sticky dough after 7 minutes, turn the mixer down to low speed and continue kneading for another 3-5 minutes until the dough looks glossy and smooth.

If you are worried about overworking the dough, you can stop at this point and just add more stretch and folds in 30 minute increments to your baking schedule. You will perform these until the dough can pass a windowpane test (described below).

Once the cinnamon bun dough is nice and smooth looking, cover with plastic wrap or an air tight bowl and allow to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes to let the dough rest. The dough will look and feel very wet. This is normal and good so do not add more flour.

After 30 minutes, use a bowl scraper to help stretch and fold the dough around all four sides. Getting the scraper a little wet can help the dough not stick as much to the sides of the bowl.

Allow the dough to rest another 30 minutes and then repeat.

Once you have completed the two sets of stretch and folds, perform a windowpane test on the dough. For best results, you will want the dough to reach this point and easily be pulled from the sides of the mixing bowl without sticking much to your hands.

To perform a windowpane test, pull the dough slowly away from the side of the bowl straight up. The dough should look smooth, elastic-like, and glossy- holding together well.

If the dough has not reached this point yet, continue with stretch and folds in 30 minute increments.

Lift the dough up and lightly butter the bowl. Return the dough to the lightly greased bowl, cover again with plastic wrap, beeswax wrap, a wet towel or an air tight lid to prevent the top of the dough from drying out.

Place the bowl in the refrigerator to proof overnight or longer for the benefits of longer fermentation of the dough. I like to at least allow the dough to rise for 8-12 hours in the refrigerator.

(If you are beginning the morning with an active starter and want to bake your rolls the same day, allow the dough to double in size on the counter at room temperature and continue with the instructions below. This bulk ferment could take anywhere from 4-8 hours until the dough has doubled in size)

The next morning, remove the dough from the refrigerator. If the dough temperature is cool, this will be easier to roll out and less sticky than a room temperature dough.

If you are leaving the dough on the counter to double in size, I recommend placing in the refrigerator 30-40 minutes before rolling out to firm up a little bit.

Next mix up your cinnamon sugar filling ingredients minus the butter so your filling is ready to go.

Separately, I like to melt the butter until soft so that it spreads easier.

Then, lay out a silicone baking mat or a large sheet of parchment paper. Dust the work surface generously with flour.

If you are concerned about the flour grains being less fermented you can use rice flour or gluten free flour for this step.

Place the sourdough cinnamon bun dough on the well floured surface.

Using a well floured rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle about 16" X 18" and 1/4" thick.

Then, taking a pastry brush or a spatula, begin spreading the slightly melted butter evenly across the entire surface of the dough.

After the butter is evenly distributed, sprinkle the cinnamon, cardamom, brown (or coconut) sugar, and vanilla sugar over the butter.

Using a pastry cutter or pizza dough cutter, slice the dough in half across the long side.

Then, starting from the bottom, slice 3 inch strips vertically across the dough. This will give you 12 equal pieces.

Make a small mark with your pastry cutter in the middle of each strip.

Beginning at the middle mark, slice the strip vertically in half up to 1/2 inch away from the center horizontal slice. Make sure not to slice through.

Next, take the two halves of one strip and begin twisting them together.

Once they have been twisted a few times, take one end as the center of the knot and roll the rest of the twist around the center, giving you a nice circle.

Place the twisted buns into a 9 x 13 buttered baking dish or large cast iron pan.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

While the oven is preheating, make the vanilla cardamom simple syrup to top the buns.

Add the sugar, water, vanilla bean caviar, and whole cardamom pods to a small sauce pan on the stove top.

On medium heat, heat the mixture and occasionally stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. This should take 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat and strain through a mesh strainer into a glass jar.

Place the simple syrup in the refrigerator until the end of baking.

When ready to bake vanilla cardamom sourdough cinnamon buns, mix up one egg and brush a light egg wash over the buns.

Bake the rolls on the middle oven rack of your fully preheated oven for 35 minutes or until slightly golden on the top and risen a bit.

Remove from the baked buns from the oven.

While the sourdough cinnamon buns are fresh out of the oven, brush the simple syrup over the hot rolls. I like to do 2-3 layers of the simple syrup. You will notice the syrup will sizzle when hitting the bottom of the dish, this will create a nice carmellization around the buns. Delicious.

Place the baking tray on a wire cooling rack and allow to cool completely before serving.

Store these cardamom cinnamon buns in an airtight container for 3-4 days on the counter, or a week in the refrigerator.

Mix up the dough and freeze to be rolled out later.

Twist the buns and flash freeze for 30 minutes. After flash freezing, move the frozen buns to a ziplock bag to be baked later.