I hope you all had a wonderful Easter however you may celebrate it, or not. I have to say though, I am thrilled it is now April 1st!! Time is moving and in a few short months we will be picking orders to a new base in a new place, very exciting.
Yes, today is April Fools Day, not sure if you participate in all the silly things but usually today passes us by like any other day,lol. It’s Monday…it’s a crappy day, Monday’s always are,lol! Today was a super busy day though and actually the whole weekend was kind of busy.
You see that beautiful bread up there? Yeah. Ahhhhhmazing. On Saturday night I got a bright idea to make something tasty for Easter breakfast. Actually how it started was I wanted french toast. Then I started to think about Cinnamon Swirl Bread and how I’ve not made one that calls for yeast in forever. Then I searched and found.
I will have you know, this is not a quick bread. It is rather a process but I will also have you know that it is worth every waiting moment!! Do not let the waiting & rising time stop you, please. This bread is heaven. It is soft, pillowy, buttery, just perfect amounts of cinnamon & sugar, although more would be awesome too! You have to make it & while you are at it, you may want to make two loaves. It will go super quick!
There is a total of 4 hours of rising time, so plan well. I woke up Easter morning at 5am, made the dough and had it in the oven and out all by 10am. So worth the wait folks! I could talk about the bread all day and I could find many words to describe how wonderful it is but instead I will leave you with the recipe in hopes that you will try it for yourself 🙂
- 1 Cup Milk
- 6 Tablespoons Butter
- 2½ Teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
- 2 Whole Eggs, Room Temperature
- ⅓ Cup Sugar
- 3½ Cups Flour
- 1 Teaspoon Salt
- ⅓ Cup Sugar
- 2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
- 1 Egg & Some Milk, Combined Together For Brushing
- Softened Butter For Greasing & Smearing
- In a small sauce pan melt butter with milk. Do not let it come to a boil. Remove from heat and let it set till just warm to the touch.
- Sprinkle yeast over mixture. You can stirl gently if desired but I just let it sit. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
- In a medium bowl combine the flour and salt, set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat sugar and eggs with your paddle till just combined. Do not over beat!
- Pour in the yeast mixture and stir enough to combine. Add half of your flour mixture then beat till combined.
- Add the rest of the flour mixture till combined.
- Remove your paddle and switch to your dough hook.
- Put on medium speed for at least 10 minutes. You may find after that 10 minutes that your dough may still be too "wet". A little sticky is fine. If it is wet, add ¼ cup flour and put it back on medium to high speed for 5 more minutes.
- Warm or heat a metal or glass mixing bowl, so it is warm to the tough, not hot.
- Coat bowl with oil, I used Vegetable. Toss the dough in the bowl to make sure it is lightly coated. Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm place to rise for about 2 hours.
- On a clean work surface turn out dough. Make sure to roll your dough no wider than the loaf pan you will be using. Try as best you can to roll it into a nice long rectangle.
- Smear with 2 tablespoons of butter or you can just take whatever amount of softened butter and smear that on the dough as well.
- Combine cinnamon and sugar. Sprinkle over dough.
- Start rolling at the far end, keeping the roll nice and tight and contained best as you can. Pinch the seam to seal the roll.
- Grease the loaf pan with softened butter, use a good amount!
- Place dough in loaf pan, seam down. Cover again with plastic wrap and allow it to rise again for about 2 hours.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Brush the loaf with the Egg/Milk mixture.
- Bake on middle shelf for 40 minutes.
- Allow baked bread to sit in pan to cool for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack. If you can, let it finishing cooling before cutting into it.
- To keep leftovers, if there are any...place in a ziplock bag.
