Here is my second bread to show off for Bread Week: an artisan cinnamon raisin bread. I’d say that it is a cinnamon “swirl” bread, but with no knead breads, they are pretty hard to create the swirl itself, so it is more like cinnamon “streak” bread. I know that raisins are a a controversial food item (sort of like Brussels Sprouts). If you don’t like ’em, leave ’em out. 🙂
Ingredients
3 1/4 cups bread flour
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry or rapid rise yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water, between 100-110F
1/4 cup Avocado Blossom Honey*
3 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon table salt
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
for the filling
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 heaping tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
You will also need a 3 1/2 – 4 quart oval or round cast iron Dutch Oven with lid.
Directions
In large bowl, place your bread flour. Make a well in the middle and sprinkle in the yeast. Pour over the warm water and drizzle in the honey and let the yeast foam for 10-15 minutes, to let the yeast become active.
After the yeast has foamed, stir the mixture, adding in the melted butter, salt and raisins, if using. The dough will be rough and very sticky, but that’s normal. Stir until all the flour is combined. There’s little kneading involved in this recipe, so you don’t need to be too concerned about the appearance of the dough at this point. Just make sure the ingredients are combined well and knead only until cohesive.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise. You can put it in the fridge for part of this time; I usually do for the first 6-7 hours in the fridge overnight, and then an hour at room temperature in the morning, but you can also let it rise in a warm, draft-free spot for 3-4 hours. After the dough has risen to double in size, preheat oven to 400F. Place the Dutch oven with the lid on in the cold oven and let it heat up with the oven.
Just before you start to shape the bread, make your filling. Mix together the melted butter, sugar and cinnamon until it makes a paste.
Place a piece of parchment paper on the counter and dust it liberally with flour. Rub flour on your hands and scrape the dough away from the sides of the bowl, gathering it in your hands as best you can (it may feel kind of fluid and not at all like regular bread dough), kneading and forming it into a circular loaf on the parchment paper. Don’t worry if it still looks a little rough in places. This lends to the rustic look of this loaf. spread it to a rough rectangle. Spread filling on one side and roll together, ending with the seam on the bottom. You might want to flour and place the shaped bread on a new piece of floured parchment, but you don’t have to.
Once you have it shaped, the loaf needs to undergo a second rise (much shorter than the first). Sprinkle flour over the top of the loaf and loosely cover it with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming over the dough. The flour also prevents the plastic wrap from sticking to the dough so when you take it off at the end of the rise, it doesn’t disturb the dough and wreck the rustic shape you’ve created. Let the dough rise for about 30 minutes. Your oven will also be preheating during this time (and so will your pot).
Once 30 minutes have passed remove the plastic wrap from the dough and trim the parchment paper into a circle closely around the dough. If it doesn’t look like the dough has risen that much, don’t worry about it. The loaf will puff up a bit when it hits the heat of the oven. Remove the preheated pot from the oven and transfer the dough into the pot as carefully as possible by handling only the parchment paper. Slash the top of the loaf a few times. Place the lid on the pot and return it to the oven for 40 minutes. Then remove the lid from the pot and continue baking for another 15-20 minutes. Remove the pot with bread from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool. Let cool completely before slicing.
* Any dark honey will do, however, avocado blossom honey tastes quite molasses-y, which accompanies the cinnamon quite nicely.
