I'm still baking often, but haven't been having as much time to blog about it. Life has been busy lately. My typical baked goods are cookies because they're fairly quick and easy to whip up and oh so yummy (especially fresh out of the oven).
Over the weekend, I wanted to do something a bit different. I saw a recipe for a bread and I wanted to make it a bit different. I love cinnamon rolls, but I didn't want to make a cinnamon rolls. I wanted a cinnamon bread that I could just rip hunks off of and eat. And so I made this pull apart cinnamon bread. It was time consuming in that you have to wait for yeast to rise, but otherwise, didn't take much time at all.
And let me tell you, the house smelled AMAZING while this was baking. My husband came in from outside and commented on how good it smelled. You want your house to smell good, so give these a try.
It's not typical to bake bread in a bundt pan, but this is gives a nice presentation and makes it easier to rip hunks off of the bread. I used a 10" bundt pan that I sprayed with PAM for Baking. You don't want this sticking in the pan!
Here's what you'll need:
- 2 1/4 tsp of active yeast
- 1 cup of warm water (about 100-110 degrees F)
- 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1 tbsp separated out
- 1/2 cup of shortening (Crisco)
- 2 medium eggs, room temp
- pinch of salt
- 3 1/2 cups - 4 cups of all purpose flour
Dip:
- 1/2 cup of melted butter
- 1/2 cup of granulated sugar
- 3-4 tbsp of cinnamon
Here's what you'll need to do:
Put the yeast, warm water, and 1 TBSP granulated sugar into a mixing bowl and gentle stir together. Let still for 5-10 minutes. If the mixture isn't bubbling or have doubled in this time, your yeast may not be any good which will result in a brick of bread that will not be baked all the way through. It will be chewy in a bad way.
Turn your oven to 200 degrees F and once it hits that temp, shut it off. (I'm not crazy, though this step sounds like I may be!)
Using a dough hook in your mixer, add the shortening, remaining sugar, eggs and salt to the yeast mixture and mix until well combined.
Add the flour in one cup at a time. ***You may not need all 4 cups*** You want the dough to be a tiny bit sticky, but not so sticky that it sticks to your finger. You also don't want the dough to be super dry. 3 3/4 cups worked perfectly for me.
Let the mixer kneed the dough for you. Let it mix on a medium/low speed for about 3 minutes.
Spray a large bowl with cooking spray or you can smear butter all over it.
Put that yummy dough in the bowl so that the spray or butter covers it, then flip the dough over so all sides are coated. This will prevent sticking to the bowl. Cover with a tea towel.
Put the dough in that oven. By heating it up a little bit, but not hot, the dough will rise better and faster. Yeast loves warm places. See I'm not crazy. Let it rise for an hour.
After the hour, the dough should have at least doubled, but most likely tripled in size. Take it out of the oven and remove the cover. Punch it down.
On a lightly floured surface, flip the dough out of the bowl.
Roll the dough to about 1/4" thickness and try to get a good rectangle shape. Using a pizza cutter, cut 40-60 pieces from the dough. I did about 40 and the pieces were large. If you want smaller hunks of bread, cut 60.
Roll the dough in your hands to make little balls.
Spray your bundt pan with PAM for baking. Buttering and flouring is an option, but I like to save time and just spray.
Melt a stick of unsalted butter. Let it cool a little so you don't burn your fingers in step 16.
Mix together the 1/2 cup granulated sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Dip the dough balls one a time in the melted butter, coating the whole dough ball in butter.
Roll the butter coated dough balls in the cinnamon and sugar mixture.
Place the dough balls in the prepared bundt pan.
Pour any remaining melted butter over the top.
Put the pan in the oven (remember, just a little warm, not hot) for another 30-45 minutes.
Take pan out of the oven and then preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Once the oven is hot, bake the dough for about 25-28 minutes.
Let the dough cool and then flip onto a plate.
You can totally drizzle an icing of powder sugar & milk mix onto this or leave as is. I did not add any glaze and fresh out of the oven, these were AMAZING! What we didn't eat, I had my husband take to work with him so I wouldn't eat the entire thing.
