Homemade cinnamon raisin swirl bread

perfect swirl with no gaps!

I was grocery shopping and really wanted cinnamon raisin bread, but it was ridiculously expensive (like $5-6 for the tiny loaf of pre-sliced bread).  I couldn't bring myself to buy it and figured that if I wanted it bad enough I could bake it myself.  I have a copy of the book The Bread Bible, and I like to look at the pictures, but haven't ever made anything from it because the recipes are rather long and intimidating.  But I finally sat down and read through a couple of recipes and they aren't that bad.  Some of the length comes from redundant directions for hand kneading vs machine kneading, and some tips at the end that turned out to be pretty useful.  In the end, I made that book's version of cinnamon raisin swirl bread, and it was really pretty fool-proof and easy, even in an RV sized oven.

Almost ready to bake.

Turns out, the biggest difficulty was finding warm enough places for the dough to rise on a cold day in an RV...it was only about 58-60 in the RV and the recipe's suggested temp for rising was 75-80.  Yes, it would have risen eventually at 60, but I eventually put the dough in the oven then put a pan of boiling water in the bottom for some moist heat.  Worked great!

The part that made the whole recipe pretty non--threatening was that after mixing the first part of the dough you can put it back in the fridge for up to 24 hours before finishing the mixing, shaping and letting it rise before baking.  That meant I could mix up part 1 of the recipe on Saturday then finish it on Sunday. This made two loaves, so I double wrapped one and put it in the freezer for a couple of days.  Maybe I'll make cinnamon raisin swirl french toast this weekend!

Cooling bread - it smelled so good it was hard not to eat it right away!

I had such good success that I've started another type of bread - a rustic hearth bread - that can be made over several days (I started it Sunday and won't bake it until Tuesday night).