Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This bread is stupid, dumb, delicious good.  For me, it is made for toast.  Toast is my desert island food, so I guess it is not a surprise that I would love a loaf made specifically for toasting.  This is very slightly adapted from Alexandra’ Stafford’s cinnamon riff on her peasant no-knead bread.

This bread is in fact so good, I may have invented a game I like to call the toast timer.  See, there are specific jobs I particularly hate.  Unloading the dishwasher (aka why I had children), and unloading groceries.  Hmm, maybe it is just unloading in general.  Now, I would not recommend that anyone do this.  No, not ever.  But if one was inclined…they could put a piece of toast in their toaster oven right before starting a dreaded task and race to see how far they get before taking a requisite break to eat said toast.

There are several advantages here.  1. You are induced to get done as much as possible because you don’t want to have to come back to finish after you have enjoyed your perfect toast.  You will want to be doing other things…like contemplating a second piece of toast.  2.  No one on earth should ever let a piece of toast sit after toasting unbuttered.  (I have been known to throw quite a fit about this, and unless you adore toast the way I do, I am not sure you can understand.  Butter a piece right after it is finished, and it stays crisp, but perfectly buttered.  But if you wait the toast is dried thoroughly and the butter just sort of seeps through, or worse yet, DOESN’T. EVEN. MELT.  Don’t be serving me that nasty toast thank you very much.)  So, with a hard and fast deadline approaching, you can generally get the dishwasher unloaded, or groceries put away.

Toast continues to surprise and amaze me.  Also, please don’t judge me too harshly at this point.  Just make the bread first and then you can see what you think.

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Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 6  cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1  tablespoon kosher salt
  • 1/4  cup sugar
  • 2 1/2  teaspoons yeast
  • 1 1/2  cups buttermilk or milk
  • 1 1/2 cup water warm, but not above 110 degrees
  • 6  tablespoons 3/4 stick butter, melted
  • Softened butter for greasing

For the cinnamon sugar inside goo

  • 1/4-1/2  cup flour for clean surface and rolling out
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2  tablespoons cinnamon
  • 1  egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water

Instructions

  1. Make the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. In a medium bowl, combine the buttermilk or milk and the water. Stir to combine, then add to the flour mixture, followed by the melted butter. Mix until the liquid is absorbed and the ingredients form a sticky (!) dough mass. Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to rise for 1 1/2 hours, or until the dough has doubled in bulk.  As anyone who has read my recipes here, I am a sucker for rising your dough near a preheating oven because it speeds it up a bit.

  2. Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 375° F. Grease two 8 1/2- by 4 1/2-inch loaf pans generously with the softened butter. Using two forks (because it is so so sticky!), separate the dough into two equal sized lumps in the bowl.

  3. Sprinkle flour onto a clean surface--this won't be a working surface, just the surface you use to rest the dough mounds flat. I used a floured cutting board for mine. Use the forks to lift one portion of dough onto the clean surface. Using as much flour as necessary, dust your hands and the exterior of the dough, and shape the mass as best you can into a ball. Repeat with the other half. Let the dough balls rest (they will get a bit poofy) for 20 minutes without touching.

  4. Dust another clean surface with flour--this will be your working surface, so you want it at least 12 x 18 inches. Transfer one round to the prepared surface and gently stretch the dough into roughly an 8 x 16-inch rectangle. In a small bowl, mix the sugar with the cinnamon. Brush the dough with the egg wash. Sprinkle the dough with half of the cinnamon-sugar mix. Beginning with one short end, roll it tightly into a log and place it in a greased loaf pan. Repeat with the remaining round. Do not cover the pans. Let the bread rise on the countertop near the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the top of the dough just crowns the rims of the pans.

  5. Transfer the pans to the oven and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and firm to the touch and the internal temp registers about 207 degrees with an instant-read thermometer. Some of my goo leaked out of the bread and started to seep over the sides, so putting a baking sheet under the rack with foil is not a bad idea. I needed to bake my loaves for the full 50 minutes. Remove the loaves from the oven, turn them out onto a cooling rack, and let them cool on their sides for 20 minutes before cutting them.