Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Snowed in again today!

Well, that's not technically true. I could have gone out if I wanted to. But who wants to drive around on dangerous roads if they can just stay home and bake bread?

I'd been meaning to bake some Italian bread all week, but since I had some extra time on my hands today I decided to bake the Italian bread and something else. That something else turned out to be wonderfully delicious cinnamon raisin bread, a credit both to Annie's Eats and to Martha Stewart, where Annie originally snagged the recipe.

Like any yeast bread, this cinnamon raisin bread was a time-consuming affair, although it had little hands-on time. Mostly, I was just waiting around for it to rise...and rise again...and rise a third time. I think because of how cold it was today, and the fact that I stupidly forgot to take my flour out of the freezer, the bread took quite a while to rise the first go 'round. However, once it doubled in size, it was an amazing dough and finished up much more quickly.

Have you ever handled a live, wonderful bread dough? If you haven't, you're going to think I'm strange by saying this. If you have, you'll totally understand... because this dough was just awesome. It was sooo full of life and supple and smooth. Really great to work with - and so easy!

I only had a couple minor problems. One, my filling came out way more fluid than Annie's did on her post. Her directions said to "sprinkle" it over the rolled out dough. I had to slather mine on. This made it a bit of a challenge to roll up, and in the oven the syrup bubbled over the sides. (Don't worry - I put down foil so it didn't devastate the oven.) Next time, I will probably use one tablespoon of water instead of two.

The second problem (if you can even call it that) is, I don't know if it's because I stretched the dough (I tried not to), but it kind of exploded a bit in the oven. So the loaf itself came out a bit wonky-looking , but I don't think it looks so bad.


Especially when it tastes. so. darn. good.