My first experience making any type of yeast bread at home was with a bread machine. Once I had been doing that for awhile I started only kneading dough in the bread machine and then baking the bread in loaf pans in the oven after the knead cycle was complete. I did this for a long time. Then, there was this one day when I wasn’t in the kitchen and there was a particularly dense dough going through the knead cycle. Perhaps I had used a bit too much flour? The machine started inching forward a little bit every time the hook was rotating in the machine. I was used to some noise when it was kneading the dough. However, I then heard a loud crash and came running to the kitchen. The bread machine had inched closer and closer to the edge of the counter until it toppled into its demise onto the tile floor below. The cord had been pulled out of the wall and the machine hit the floor with enough intensity to break apart. I didn’t want to buy another bread machine so I started looking online for recipes that I could make by hand or with my stand mixer and dough hook. I was already hooked on the taste of homemade bread. There’s just nothing that’s quite the same as slicing into a warm loaf fresh from your own oven.

One of the recipes I saw time and time again online when I was learning how to make bread was Julia Child’s white bread. There are some variations of the recipe but if you look it up you’ll see that many bakers use it time and time again. It is a great recipe for learning to work with bread dough. It is also nice that it can either be done by hand or with a stand mixer and bread dough hook. One of the things I like about this recipe is that it works really well for making a cinnamon swirl loaf. I almost always make one plain loaf and one cinnamon swirl. If I am making both loaves plain then I slice one and put it in the freezer for later use. When my kids were much younger I would actually divide it into 3 loaf pans and slice and freeze 2 ready for another day. The much smaller loaves were the perfect size for toddler sandwiches.  This became my family’s go to bread for grilled cheese.

Now that my kids are older I make the standard two loaves. The cinnamon bread doesn’t last long once it comes out of the oven. When it is sliced warm and served with butter it is delicious. It also makes great french toast if you can figure out how to keep it around long enough to make it into french toast the next morning.

At the end of the recipe I’ve included a link to a video for shaping the dough and making the cinnamon loaf.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups warm water (around 110 F / 43 C )
• 1 Tbsp active dry yeast
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 6 to 6 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cups softened unsalted butter (2 oz or 57 grams)

Optional ingredients for cinnamon swirl loaf

• .25-.5 oz softened unsalted butter (1/2 Tbsp – 1 Tbsp)
• 2 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Method

• Put 1/2 cup of the water into the bottom of a stand mixer. It should be around 110 F. If you don’t have a thermometer to measure, it should be a little above your body temperature. It should be warm to the touch but not hot. Stir in the yeast and let it stand for about 5 minutes until the yeast gets foamy.

• Add in 3 cups of the flour, the rest of the warm water, and the butter and salt. Stir the ingredients together with a spoon just to get the dough started some. Add 3 more cups of the flour and knead with the dough hook until well combined. You may or may not need the last 1/2 cup of flour. The dough will pull away from the sides of the bowl and become smooth once it is ready. If it is sticking too much to the bottom of the bowl or the sides, slowly add in a little more flour until it pulls away and starts working its way up the dough hook.  Just add a little flour at a time until you have a good consistency. You can also knead this dough by hand. Keep kneading it until it comes together in a smooth and elastic ball.

• If you use a stand mixer, take the dough out at the end of your kneading and shape it into a ball.
• Place the dough back into the bowl and cover it with a tea towel. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in volume for about an hour in a warm place. The time it takes will vary quite a bit depending on humidity and the temperature where it is rising. I have made this dough in Central America under high humidity and an 85 F kitchen and it doubled in just over 40 minutes or so. I have also made this recipe in Virginia in the winter where it took closer to an hour and a half. The most important thing is not the specific amount of time it takes but that the dough has time to double in size.

• Spray two loaf pans with cooking spray or lightly butter them.
• Punch the dough down and divide it in half.
• Lightly flour a clean work surface. Take half of the dough and roll it out into a rough rectangle. It will be around 12 inches long or so. I place the loaf pan just in front of the dough and make sure the length of the dough is just under the size of the length of the pan. Fold one third of the dough toward the middle starting at a smaller end of the dough. (I like to flip the dough over so I get a nice smooth top to the dough.) Fold it gently over the other third of the dough. Place the dough, seam side down, into the loaf pan. If it stretched any while you were shaping it you may need to tuck in the sides a little.
• If you are making both loaves plain, repeat last step with the second half of dough.
• If you are making a cinnamon loaf read on.
• Roll the second half of dough into a little longer rectangle. (around 15-16 inches) Again, I place the loaf pan just in front of the dough so I don’t roll out the dough too wide. Roll the dough out and spread a small amount of softened butter over the top. You want a thin layer over the top just to hold the cinnamon sugar. Start with about 1/2 Tbsp and add a little more if needed.
• Stir the cinnamon into the sugar and sprinkle evenly over the top of the butter. Spread it evenly and gently press the sugar mixture down into the dough.
• Starting at one of the smaller ends, roll up the dough. Try to keep the dough stretched tightly as you roll it.
• Tuck in the ends of the dough and place it into the other loaf pan seam side down.
• Cover the loafs with a tea towel and let rise for about 45 minutes to an hour. They will rise up over the top of the loaf pans.

• Preheat your oven to 375 F while your loaves are rising.
• Bake for 35 minutes until the tops turn a beautiful golden brown. Turn bread out immediately onto racks to cool.

• Enjoy!

 

Here’s a video of shaping the dough and putting it into the pans.