After making some basic bread with the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes technique, which I already wrote about, I began to branch out and use some of the recipes in the book to make special breads. One that was fun for Nick and me to make together was the cinnamon swirl bread.
After scooping some of the dough from my refrigerated batch (which was made with 13 cups of flour), Nick floured it and rolled it out.
Then we painted it with an eggwash and sprinkled on a cinnamon sugar mixture. Then he added raisins–but not the full cup suggested by the recipe, and he rolled the dough up jelly roll style.
After pinching the ends, we put the rolled dough, seam down, in a well greased loaf pan and let it rise about an hour.
With the warmth of the fire in the woodstove, the loaf rose beautifully, and then we baked it in the loaf pan.
We waited as long as we could for the loaf to cool, and we were rewarded with pretty spirals of cinnamon in our slices.
This bread is not extremely rich and makes a nice breakfast or brunch bread. I used about 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 unbleached white flour in this batch of dough–along with vital wheat gluten to encourage a nice rise. The cinnamon swirl bread is not only attractive and delicious, it’s fun to make and bake with good company!
