cinnamon sugar bread

There were a lot of things working against me when I decided to make this cinnamon sugar bread from Joy the Baker. I've been daydreaming of making the recipe for months and finally decided to go for it the morning before my last day of work at Stanford. I knew the process would take a while but I wanted to say thank you to the ASCO team for being so kind, friendly, and supportive.



However, after deciding to do this, there were challenges to overcome:

- I started at 2am (and the bread needed to rise twice)
- I only had one bowl
- We only have small chopping boards and our kitchen counter is tiled
- (i.e. I had to lay down saran wrap on my tiled counter to roll out the dough)
- No rolling pin
- During the bread's first rise, I accidentally left it in our freezing cold kitchen. Whoops.

But, by some miracle, I had all of the ingredients. I took weird 1 hour naps during the rising/waiting/baking process. And the bread came out really well!

And I wasn't late to work!





cinnamon sugar bread
adapted from Joy the Baker

dough:
2 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 envelope active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 ounces butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

filling:
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 ounces butter, melted until browned

Mix 2 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt in one bowl and set aside. In another bowl, whisk eggs and set aside. Melt the butter with the milk in a small pot, remove from heat, then add water and vanilla. Add milk mixture to dry ingredients. Add eggs and mix until incorporated. Joy said that her mixture felt soupy, but mine felt dry. Add the remaining 3/4 cups of flour. Just keep mixing until everything is incorporated and sticky.

Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic and a tea towel, and leave it to rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Once the dough rises, mix the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together. Melt the remaining butter. Set aside both items.

Knead your newly risen dough with about 2 tablespoons of flour. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 5 minutes. Roll out the dough until it's about 12" x 20" if you can. I couldn't just roll it out as much as you can.

Spread melted butter on rolled dough then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Cut the dough into strips of six. Stack the strips on top of one another until you have just one strip. Then cut that single strip into six squares (like this). Layer the squares sideways into a greased bread pan. (My squares weren't really even but it didn't matter.)

Cover with a kitchen towel and leave to rise for another hour.

Bake at 350°F for 30-35 minutes, or until dark golden brown on top. Let rest for 30 minutes then remove from pan.

Eat and die of happiness.