Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Sad Mood? Have some sweet bread!

Cinnamon Raisin Bread to be exact. I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com. I needed an easy, sweet yeast bread to cheer up my family. Sweet, chewy comfort food with a beginner's level of difficulty. (You have seen my previous attempts at yeast bread. Sigh.) I feel like I've improved a bit, but I've still got a loooong way to go before I'm satisfied with my yeast bread-making skill level.

Here's the dough after the first rise. With this batch, I let it rise in the fridge for a day for the first rise, then over night after I shaped it for the second.

This beast was quite some work to roll out. The recipe makes three loaves. I made 6 mini loaves, but it still required a lot of muscle. The dough is very hearty. (And I'm always wondering if I put in too much flour. With every dough I've made, I always added more flour because the dough was too sticky.) Sigh, again. BUT! Cinnamon and sugar make anything delicious.

The giant loaf of sweetness. Reminds me of a sea cucumber. I was going to put a link on "sea cucumber", but they are not appetizing animals. I'll let you research that one for yourselves.

I cut the loaf into six equal pieces. The recipe suggests that you ball up the ends so that the cinnamon lines don't show.

I wanted to see what happens, so I only closed up half. I like the cinnamon lines.

Here are the tasty mini loaves after a night of resting in the fridge. I now see why they said to close up the ends. The moisture inside the pan, under the cellophane wrap, causes some of the cinnamon sugar to run out of the roll. Sadness.

Two things: my balling/tying the ends didn't hold at all, and I had an issue with baking consistency. Also, I do not suggest baking them in a casserole dish like I did. The bottoms didn't get cooked, so I flipped them upside down to bake, whilst the tops still continued to cook...

...Ta-da! My usual burn on the top yeast bread. Will someone tell me how you bake the bread evenly? PLEASE!

For what it's worth, the non-burnt parts were very tasty. The bread had a nice "tooth-feel", good chew, and didn't flake/fall apart. Hooray! One problem solved at a time, one at a time. I hope I haven't discouraged you from baking this bread. Please give it a try. If yours turns out better, hit me up with your tips. Happy baking!

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