This bread was really good. I made it for breakfast on the Sunday morning of General Conference. I always try and make something fun or new for breakfast on conference weekend, and this is what Mike picked. I love the idea of breads for breakfast, but how do you make them, so they're fresh out of the oven, without getting up at 5 in the morning to make it or having breakfast at noon?? I did a little shortcut with this recipe.
I had never made a bread dough up to the point where you can refrigerate it and then leave it over night. I was scared about that, but it worked out totally fine! Until the baking happened...We'll get to that later. I wish the blogger that I got this from just gave more tips and advice in her posts. I love her blog, but she's got one of those fancy shmancy blogs where she says things like "I've never even tasted store bought icing or used a loaf of frozen bread dough bought at the store" and blah blah blah. One can only hope to aspire to be as FANTASTIC as that...
Anyways, still a great blog with amazing recipes, just not a fan of her style.
Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread
Yield: one 9 x 5" loaf
Ingredients:
For the dough:
2¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
¼ cup granulated sugar
2¼ tsp. instant yeast
½ tsp. salt
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
1/3 cup whole milk
¼ cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
For the filling:
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
Directions:
To make the dough, combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook. Combine the butter and milk in a small saucepan and heat just until the butter is melted. Set aside and let cool briefly, until the mixture registers 115-125˚ F on an instant-read thermometer. Add the milk mixture, water, vanilla and eggs to the mixer bowl. Mix on low speed until a cohesive dough forms. Continue to knead until smooth and elastic, adding additional flour as needed 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough clears the sides of the bowl and is tacky but not sticky. Knead about 3-5 minutes. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to coat, and cover. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. (After the dough has doubled, it can be wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated overnight. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes before proceeding.)
While the dough rises, add the butter to a small saucepan and melt until browned. Set aside. Combine the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a small bowl and mix well.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and gently deflate. Roll into a ball, cover with a clean towel and let rest for 5 minutes. Roll the dough out into an approximately 12 x 20-inch rectangle. Brush the dough with the browned butter. Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the dough in an even layer. (Yes, really, use all of it.)
Lightly grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Slice the dough vertically into 6 even strips. Stack the strips on top of each other and again cut again into 6 equal slices. Stack all the squares on top of each other and set into the prepared loaf pan. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place, 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Transfer the loaf to the oven and bake 30-35 minutes, until the top is golden brown. (If the top seems to be browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil at the end of baking.) Remove from the oven and let rest in the pan 20-30 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen and carefully turn the loaf out, transferring to a serving plate. Serve warm.
*I'm not the biggest fan of browned butter. I just melted mine in the microwave for a few seconds and it turned out fine.
By show of hands, who can see what I did wrong here? If you read the recipe, you would know that I was supposed to put the butter and cinnamon and sugar on top before slicing. Yeah....
Here are the strips stacked the first time...
...and after being sliced a second time!
This is where I might have gone wrong? Although I'm not sure? I think I should have smushed them together better when putting them in the pan.
This was the point when I knew that refrigerating the dough over night had actually worked. The dough rose in the pan! I was so excited. But wait...
This is where things took a turn for the dumb. As I was putting the pan in the oven, I thought "Maybe I should put this on a cookie sheet. No no, she would've said something on the blog about that." She didn't. She should have. The combination of cinnamon, sugar, and butter has a tendency to bubble over and make a mess.
It throws up in your oven if you will. Also, see that down there? That's one of the squares of bread. Stuck to the bottom of my oven. It was so fun to clean this between conference sessions. It was even more fun to smell burned cinnamon rolls every time I turned on the oven for a week after this.
Ta da......?
Honestly, I'll probably give this one more shot somewhere down the road, trying things a little differently. If it goes the same, then I rid myself of it!
Recipe Source: Annie's Eats