Cinnamon Raisin Loaf

I've been wanting to bake something to bring into work, and decided to make the Cinnamon Raisin Loaf from The Bread Bible (minus the raisins). It struck me as something that would be nice to have early on a Monday morning as we're getting ready for another week of lost library cards and weird altercations in the parking lot.

And if you can't tell, yes, I'm more-or-less baking my way through this book. "More or less" because I'm allergic to nuts, and there are a few nut-heavy recipes in there.

This bread, again, starts out with a dough sponge. Even though yesterday wasn't especially humid, I ended up needing to add a CUP more flour than the recipe calls for just to get it from "thick batter" to "kneadable dough" status. This isn't one of the recipes with listed errors, but 1 3/4 cups of water plus about 4 cups of flour seems off to me. However, seeing that I was supposed to have a "soft dough", I just added flour 1/4 cup at a time until I had something that felt like the right texture.

Once the dough has risen, it goes into the refrigerator to firm up so that it can be flattened into a rectangle. The dough is then coated with an egg wash and a cinnamon-sugar mixture, rolled up, left to rise again, and then baked.

Finished loaf cooling:


Yes, that's some cinnamon leakage on the side:


Sliced, showing actual SPIRALS!


The finished bread is moist and dense; I can't wait to try toasting up a slice or two. It's not too sweet, and makes a perfect breakfast treat.