The aroma of freshly baking bread can only be beat by the aroma of freshly baking cinnamon bread.
This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is a rich, buttery, yeast dough accented with a spiral of cinnamon, cocoa, and raisins. That is, if you aren’t out of raisins like I am. I assure you the bread is completely satisfying without the raisins and David would argue it’s greatly improved by the missing ingredient.
If yeasted bread is beyond your baking realm, reconsider before discounting the possibility. If you have a stand mixer there is no excuse not to give this a try. Not that bread requires a stand mixer, but this dough is really wet and would be difficult to mix by hand. Too time consuming you say? What if I told you I mixed this up in about 20 minutes and then placed it in an oiled bowl, covered with plastic wrap and and left it in the refrigerator overnight? I put the bread on my time schedule by letting it retard in the refrigerator overnight rather than waiting for 1 ½ hours for the first rise. Not only did this suit my schedule better, but a long slow rise allows the bread to develop more flavor.
This morning I pulled it out of the fridge and let it warm up for about an hour while I went to my swim workout. It was still quite chilled when I rolled it out which makes me think it would probably roll out just fine right from the refrigerator. To roll it out, spread with butter, sprinkle on the filling and roll it up took all of about 10 minutes. I let it rise for about an hour and baked it.
The biggest challenge for me in baking bread is getting the timing to fit in with what I have going on in a day. One of the best discoveries I’ve made is the slow refrigerated rise. This dough would have been fine to leave chilling a day or two longer if I needed to. The nice thing about this technique is it can be applied to any bread recipe. I find it so much easier to mix dough at night after dinner and then just leave it in the fridge until I have a long enough block of time at home to let it rise and bake.
With a little practice making bread will seem as easy and familiar as anything else you cook regularly. Enriched bread like this that uses milk, butter and egg is a great place to start. Even if it doesn’t rise enough, or rises too much, it will still taste really good. Once you get the hang of making this type of dough you can make cinnamon rolls, babka, crumb cakes, brioche and the list goes on; they all use essentially the same type of dough.
If you take advantantage of the free 14 day membership to Rouxbe online cooking school you can access their outstanding bread lessons and you’ll be a bread-baking-pro in no time. What’s this Rouxbe deal all about, you ask? Here are the deatils about our Rouxbe affiliation.
Click here to get your FREEThanks to Susan of Food.Baby for filling our house with the incomparable aroma of baking bread. She has the recipe posted on her blog and I hope you will give it a try.
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Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 130 recipes completed 91 to go!
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that’s one pretty darn perfect looking swirl. nice job!
Looks gorgeous!
Im glad you enjoyed the bread! It looks great! I loved this recipe, it was easy and so tasty. If you have not tired the bread made into french toast, do so! It was my favorite!!
It didn’t last long enough to be made into French toast, so I’ll have to make another loaf and give that a try.
Gret looking bread. It was incredibly easy and quite tasty (w/out the raisins). Repeat often for a QUICK bread.
what a beautiful loaf of bread!!
It looks beautiful! My husband would have been thrilled if I had been out of raisins, but that just doesn’t happen in our house. I like the two-day option with bread baking too; it makes it so much easier to fit into my schedule!
I like the idea of the slow rise but always forget about it. It used to be the yeast itself that was the obstacle but, you’re right, now it is fitting bread making into my schedule.