Who doesn’t love a cinnamon roll or a lightly toasted slice of cinnamon bread with just enough raisins? There were a number of false starts before we arrived at the lovely golden brown destination. I resorted to the heavy artillery and consulted Cook’s Illustrated after several less than satisfactory attempts and inconsistent outcomes.

Readers of the blog will know – Cook’s Illustrated, IMHO, is one of the few cooking websites worth paying for. Why? They apply science and sweat to cooking problems. The cinnamon swirl bread recipe that I used as the foundation for the recipe below is a case in point. I have adapted some of the methods and tweaked the ingredients but the genius is theirs.

Several warnings before you read on. Equipment – you must have a KitchenAid or equivalent mixer to knead the dough. I don’t think it can be hand kneaded or done by stretch and fold. Ingredients – you are unlikely to have dry powdered skim milk in your store cupboard. It’s important for texture and lightness for the dough. Nerves of steel – after 10 minutes of machine kneading you will be convinced that the dough is not going to come together. Trust me, it does. Instructions – the folding and braiding instructions seem complicated but aren’t. Be methodical.

If you haven’t running screaming back to an easier recipe, bake on!

Ingredients

Dough

• 55 grams unsalted butter
• 290 grams strong white bread flour
• 40 grams skim dry milk powder (sift to get rid of lumps if necessary)
• 35 grams caster sugar
• 1 1/2teaspoons active dry yeast
• 170 mls warm water (55 C)
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 100 grams raisins
• 1 medium egg

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Filling

• 55 grams icing sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt

Egg wash

• 1 medium egg lightly beaten with a pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Cut the butter into 16 pieces, toss with a tablespoon of flour to coat. Set aside.
2. Whisk together the flour, milk powder, yeast (do not add the salt yet) in the bowl of your KitchenAid (other stand mixers are available but mine is 25 years old and going strong). Attach the dough hook.
3. Add the water and the egg and mix on low speed until a cohesive dough forms. It will not pull away from the sides of bowl and will seem sticky. Scrape down the sides. Cover with plastic wrap or a shower cap. Leave to rest for 20 minutes.
4. Remove the shower cap, add the salt and knead on low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic. This can be as quick as 8 minutes or up to 15 minutes. The mixture will seem sticky and will not form a ball of dough. Yet.
5. With the mixer still running, add the butter a few pieces at a time and continue kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic. This is the point where you might start to think ‘this will never work’. It does. As the butter is incorporated the dough starts to form, clears the sides of the bowl and you relax. This might take another 3 to 5 minutes.
6. Add the raisins and give it another 60 seconds of mixing. Using a dough scraper, transfer the dough to a large greased bowl. Do a series of eight clock folds; lifting the edge of the dough, pulling it towards the centre and turning the bowl.
7. Cover the dough tightly with plastic wrap. Leave to double in size. After an hour, do another series of clock folds. The first rise may take several hours. I did the first hour on the work bench and then the rest overnight in the refrigerator. As always, the timing of the rise this depends on the temperature of your kitchen.
8. Make the filling by whisking the dry ingredients together and adding the vanilla. It will look very dry.
9. Prep your loaf pan. Either grease well with a hard fat (butter or Trex or Crisco) or line with paper.
10. Lightly flour your work surface. Turn to dough out on to the work surface. Shape into a rough rectangle (15 cms by 27 cms) and fold top third to the middle and bottom third over both. Turn lengthwise, roll away from you into a rough ball. Dust the ball with flour. Flatten with a rolling pin to a rectangle 18 cm by 45 cm. It should about 1 cm thick and fairly even.
11. Spray or sprinkle the dough lightly with water. This makes the filling stick. Be abstemious with the water. Sprinkle the filling over the top, leave clean margins on all sides of the rectangle. Spray it again with water and roll up into a cylinder staring with short side. It should be a firm cylinder that it is about 20 cms in length. Tuck in the ends. Dust lightly with flour, cover with a towel and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
12. Clean your work surface. Gently stretch the cylinder out to roughly twice its original length. Cut it in half with a bench knife or scraper. Turn the pieces so the cut sides are facing up. Pinch the top ends of the two pieces together (you’re going to do a Russian braid or twist). Take the piece on the left, cross it over the piece on the right. Repeat left over right trying to keep the cut sides facing up until the pieces are twisted tightly together. Pinch the bottom of the two pieces together. Poke any raisins back into the dough. Gently transfer to your prepared pan.
13. Allow to rise until almost doubled in size meanwhile preheating your oven to 170 C. Brush the loaf with your egg wash. Bake for 20 minutes until the top is well browned. Reduce the oven temperature to 160 C and cover the loaf with foil. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes. Your thermometer should register 90-95 C when the bread is baked.

Thank you for reading the blog. Good luck with your baking. Thank you for following, sharing, commenting. Send questions and requests via comments, or Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Search ‘mamadolson’ and you should find me.

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Tags: breakfast breadbreakfast treatscinnamon raisin breadcinnamon raisin swirlcinnamon swirl bread