Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This bread was so great!

It was actually cinnamon raisin bread, but I don’t enjoy raisins in bread, so I cut them out. The recipe made 2 loaves, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat that much bread, so I halved the recipe. I would also recommend only making a 1/3 - 1/4 of the filling, because there was way too much for 1 loaf of bread even halved.

The recipe:
½ package of yeast
1 cup warm water
3 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
½ stick of butter
¼ cup sugar
1 egg

I put the yeast and water together and let bubble for a few minutes, before adding the rest of the ingredients. I put everything in my bread maker and pressed start. I let the dough rise for the first time in the bread machine, but that ended up taking forever, because it doesn’t get warm enough. I can’t complain though, I got it for $5 at a yard sale. The second time I put the oven on warm for a bit and then turned it off, before putting the bowl full of dough with plastic on top in the oven. In between the first and second rise though, I patted the dough into a round and then folded the bottom third up, the top third down, and the right and left sides over. Put the seams on the bottom of the bowl. I don’t really know if it matters which you do first, it seems like it wouldn’t, but I followed directions. This rise took an hour.

Filling:
¾ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about 12x10 inches. I put only about half the filling on, before I thought, this is freaking ton of sugar. So I probably only used between a ¼ and a 1/3 of the full recipe, which is double what I just listed above! Then I tucked in the sides before rolling up the dough and putting it into a grease loaf pan. I let this rise about 30 minutes. I brushed the top of the loaf with a beaten egg and then baked at 425˚ for 45 minutes. I ended up putting foil on top about halfway through, because it was getting really brown.

It was delicious! It makes great French toast too after it’s been a few days and it’s dried out somewhat.