Tag: yeast

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Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This sweet, buttery bread makes the finest French toast, the sweetest snack, and the tastiest toast. This recipe is designed for the bread machine, which I consider one of the ten greatest inventions of all time. You can customize it with raisins (if you like that sort of nonsense) or finely chopped nuts, by adding them when you sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on your dough. Go on, give it a swirl!

Ingredients

Bread

  • 1 cup Milk
  • 1/4 cup Hot Water*
  • 1 Large Egg
  • 2 tbsp Butter or Margarine, softened
  • 1/3 cup White Sugar
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 1/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • 3 cups Bread Flour
  • 2 tsp Active Dry Yeast

*Hot tap water is just fine; no additional heating is needed. You just want to warm up the milk and egg a bit as the dough is mixing to give the yeast a fighting chance. 

Swirl

  • 4 tbsp Margarine or Butter
  • 1/3 cup White Sugar
  • 2 tbsp Ground Cinnamon

Directions

  1. Place all Bread ingredients in the pan of your bread machine in the order listed.
  2. Select the Dough cycle and press Start.
  3. Relax while you send an email to Panasonic, expressing your gratitude to them for inventing the home bread machine in 1986.
  4. When the dough cycle is complete, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.
  5. Knead briefly, and roll into a long rectangle approximately 1/2-inch thick, with the shorter side of the dough slightly more narrow than the longer side of your bread pan.
  6. To make the swirl, melt butter or margarine.
  7. Brush the rectangle of dough with butter or margarine until well coated. Reserve remaining melted butter or margarine.
  8. Mix together sugar and cinnamon.
  9. Sprinkle cinnamon mixture evenly over buttered dough.
  10. Roll the dough tightly, from the shorter side.
  11. Spray a bread pan with cooking spray.
  12. Place the rolled dough in the pan, with the seam on the bottom.
  13. Allow to rise in a warm, quiet place for 30-45 minutes, until doubled in size, and taller than the rim of the bread pan.
  14. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  15. Re-melt remaining butter or margarine if needed, and brush loaf with it.
  16. Bake in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and cooked through.
  17. Remove from the oven, and transfer to a cooling rack. Allow to cool to room temperature before wrapping.
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16-Cent Soft Pretzels

These pretzels have all the great taste and texture of Auntie What’s-Her-Name’s at about 4% of the price! I’ve tailored this recipe to make the dough in the bread machine because I’m not a masochist. The sweetness of this pretzel works great with cinnamon and sugar as well as more traditional toppings.

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup Warm Water
  • 1/4 cup White Sugar
  • 3/4 tsp. Salt
  • 2-1/2 cups Bread Flour
  • 2 tsp. Active Dry Yeast
  • 4 cups Water
  • 1/2 cup Baking Soda
  • Kosher Salt, Poppy Seeds, Sesame Seeds, or Cinnamon Sugar

Directions

  1. Add warm water, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast to bread machine pan in order listed.
  2. Select Dough cycle and press Start.
  3. Relax and smile the smug smile of someone who knows that they don’t have any mixing, kneading, or rising to attend to.
  4. Just before dough cycle is complete, put four cups of water into a large glass bowl, and microwave for about 5 minutes until almost boiling. Make sure the bowl is large enough! It should be no more than 1/2 full of water.
  5. Add baking soda to water and stir to incorporate. It will foam up like an elementary school science project volcano. Hence the need for the large bowl.
  6. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
  7. When dough cycle is complete, remove dough from pan and knead briefly on a very lightly floured surface.
  8. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
  9. Cut dough into 12 equally sized pieces.
  10. Roll each piece of dough out with your hands into a long snake. The longer and thinner it is, the easier it will be to shape.
  11. Hold each end of the dough snake and flip it so it twists twice. Then lay on the lightly floured surface and tuck the ends over the center of the loop to create the traditional pretzel shape.
  12. Slide a thin spatula under your shaped pretzel and dip it in the water and baking soda mixture. Make sure the dough it is entirely coated, but don’t soak it. Your pretzel should only be in the water for about five to ten seconds.
  13. Lift pretzel out of the water and baking soda mixture with the spatula, and arrange it on the prepared baking sheet. Make sure there is plenty of space between each pretzel.
  14. Sprinkle with Kosher Salt, Poppy Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Cinnamon Sugar, or whatever floats your boat.
  15. Repeat steps 10 through 14 until all dough has been used.
  16. Bake in preheated oven for 9-10 minutes until dark brown.
  17. Remove from oven and immediately transfer to a cooling rack.
  18. Enjoy with spicy mustard, fondue, or just as they are!

 

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