I like to share my love of baking with others in the form of presents consisting of baked goods. Last year for Christmas I gave all the married members of my massive family a "Cookies in a Jar" set. It was fun to make and I didn't break the bank trying to think of presents for all 12+ of them. My parents and Joseph's parents got a really cute Christmas tin filled with homemade cookies and tons of little candies. They were cute and once again, played to my best assets: baking.
This year, I decided to give baked goods as birthday presents as well. Nothing says "Happy Birthday" like a nice cake or a dozen cookies. One of my boss' birthday was yesterday, and last week I decided to make her something out of the ordinary. I didn't want to bake my usual cake or cookie ensemble. I wanted to challenge myself, but I lacked the ideas. My other boss (I have like four...) is moving off campus this summer (bummer) and was giving away tons of baking supplies. Net gain in my opinion. I laid claim to a brand new cheesecake pan and an assortment of baking necessities. Now most of you are probably thinking, "Why is the title of this post about bread if she just received a cheesecake pan??" Wrong! I am terrified of making a cheesecake. It's hard, and I really don't like failure. My goal is to successfully make one this summer, but that's a different post. Among the baking necessities I gained from Gena was a single packet of yeast (long expired btw). Thus the inspiration for Rikki's birthday present was born.
I immediately ran up to KK's office and asked what kind of bread to make. Unfortunately, she chose cinnamon raisin. Not really my favorite, but I decided to roll with it. After work, I started looking for cinnamon raisin bread recipes. I've never made bread, and was actually shocked to see that nowadays most people use a bread machine. I don't believe in nonsense like that. I wanted to make the bread from scratch, not mix all the ingredients and let the bread machine do all the work. I finally decided on one from allrecipes.com (quite possibly one of my favorite websites) and went to the store for all the ingredients. This recipe was really quite cheap (less than $10) and made three loaves of bread. I didn't really need three loaves of bread, but decided to do the whole recipe anyways just in case I missed something if I scaled it down.
Fast forward to my kitchen. All the ingredients are out, computer set up with the recipe, and I realize it's 8 at night. This recipe says it takes three and a half hours and I have work at 8am, but I really want to get Rikki her birthday present so I just start following directions. FIVE hours, a flour-filled kitchen, and tons of dirty dishes later I have this:
Three perfectly shaped beautiful loaves of cinnamon raisin bread waiting to be baked. Let's go back to that capitalized five hour statement. Yeah....apparently 3.5 actually means 5. Granted that's probably because A) I had never made bread before and B) my kitchen was cold as ice and the dough took *forever* to rise. Despite the slight problems regarding time (going to bed at 1:30 am just to get up at 7 kinda sucks), I still absolutely fell in love with making bread. That being said, I will probably lay off the cookie and cake recipes for a while and experiment with breads and possibly cheesecakes.
The three loaves of bread managed to disappear fast. One went to Rikki for her birthday, one was split between various Housing staff, and the other was all mine (and Joseph's, and whoever else stopped by my room). I actually took the last of the bread yesterday morning and made cinnamon raisin french toast. I think it tasted even better than the plain bread when it first came out of the oven, but maybe I'm biased towards french toast.
And now that my rantings are over, I present the awesome recipe that produced those beautiful loaves of bread.
Cinnamon-Raisin Bread
adapted from allrecipes.com
Supplies Needed
3 loaf pans
an instant read thermometer
one large mixing bowl
Ingredients
1 1/2 c. milk
1 c. warm water (must be between 110-115 degrees)
2 (1/4 ounce) packages of active dry yeast
3 eggs
1/2 c. white sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup raisins
8 c. all-purpose flour
2 tbs. milk
1 c. white sugar
4 tbs. ground cinnamon
2 tbs. melted butter
Directions
1. Warm the milk in a small sauce pan on the stove until it just starts to bubble, stir occasionally.
2. Remove the milk from heat and let cool to about 120-125 degrees.
3. Dissolve the yeast in the cup of warm water and set aside until yeast is frothy, about 10 min. (Make sure the water is at the correct temperature or the yeast won't activate.)
4. Mix yeast, eggs, sugar, butter, salt, and raisins in a large mixing bowl. Slowly add the cooled milk (you don't want to cook the eggs).
5. Add the flour to the mixture gradually to make a stiff dough.
6. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes till smooth.
7. Place the dough in a large, buttered, mixing bowl and turn to grease the surface of the dough.
8. Cover with a warm, damp cloth and let rise in a warm, non-drafty place until doubled, usually 1 1/2 hours.
9. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until the surface is a large rectangle about 1/2 inch thick.
10. Moisten the surface of the dough with 2 tbs. of milk.
11. Mix together 1 c. of sugar and 4 tbs. of cinnamon and sprinkle mixture evenly over the surface of the dough.
12. Roll dough up tightly (the long way). The roll should be about 3 inches in diameter.
13. Cut roll into thirds, tuck under ends, and pinch bottom together.
14. Place loaves into well greased (I used Crisco shortening) loaf pans and lightly grease tops of loaves.
15. Let rise in a warm place, uncovered, for about 1 hour.
16. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes (mine took 40 minutes) or until loaves are lightly browned and sound hollow when tapped.
17. Remove from oven and spread melted butter over tops of loaves.
18. After 20 minutes, lay loaf pans on their sides and remove loaves.
19. Let cool before slicing (if you have the willpower).
20. Wrap extra bread in aluminum foil.
