Thursday, February 14, 2013

Cinnamon CRAZY bread loaf , yeah, I was bored

I was making bread.  Regular white bread.  The loaf I make every couple of days.  Just the one, over and over and over again.  The loaves are gigantic, light, flavorful, make great sandwiches and are generally the hit of any function that requires I bring sandwiches.

I made a loaf and put the dough aside to rise.  I stared into the kitchen aid mixer.
"I wish I had cinnamon buns but I don't want to mess with cinnamon buns."  (My committee speaks to me frequently)
I looked at the proofing box with the delicious white bread loaf inside.  Rising.

DING! DING! DING!
KITCHEN ALCHEMY BRAINSTORM MOMENT!

I quickly made another batch of white bread dough. I put it in a second proofing box and stood back... poured a glass of wine and waited. I was brilliant and I didn't mind waiting.

TRACY'S CINNAMON LOAF

1 recipe single loaf white bread (recipe and link to follow)
a lot of butter
a lot of cinnamon sugar
powdered sugar.

There are NO measurements. Look at what I did:

When the dough had proofed, I rolled it out to a super large rectangle.  I slathered it thickly with butter and then sprinkled it with cinnamon sugar.  I used a pizza cutter and sliced it three times...  four pieces!  I STACKED them!!
  
I sprayed my extra long, thin, loaf pan (any will do) and then used the pizza cutter to slice the stack of 4 into about 20 pieces.  maybe 1 1/2 inches wide?  then I STACKED them in the loaf pan!  HAHA  Seriously, this stuff comes out of my head.
  
I squashed them in, next time I won't do QUITE so many but I was totally in experimentation mode here.  LOOK at how adorable they look all squashed in together!!  Just to gild the Lilly (what a weird phrase?!)  I sprinkled more icing sugar on top, covered it loosely with a dry towel and left it about 20 minutes.
   
AHHAHAHA  LOOK!  It was crazy wonky and I figured, "what the heck, bake it!"  So, into a preheated 375 oven for about 30 inutes and look  AHHHAHAHAH  It looks CRAZY!
   
I stared at it a momentm, not sure if I'd messed up completely and then it dawned on me, I COULD pull slices off!  HOLEE COW!
  
I decided it needed powdered sugar.  I would have made icing but I didn't have enough.  NEXT time, it'll be iced with a drizzled icing that can run down the sides and into the grooves... yeah, I'm there with you!  I pulled it out of the pan and it stood there...  looking like a VanGogh and then we started pulling slices off... and eating them, then eating some more.  It's like the very middle piece of the cinnamon bun, each slice!  Super thin slices that are buttery and cinnamony and sugary and I rolled each one up as I pulled it off.
   
This is one of my more brilliant alchemy moments.  Other than the icing, I wouldn't change a thing.  I may make one for girls movie night tomorrow night.  I think a room full of women, escaping for the evening from husbands, children and work, with bottles of wine strewn around the room will HAPPILY devour this in record time.  EXACTLY what it was meant for.
 

Do this... go play with dough.  If you don't have your own single loaf recipe, I suppose you can use frozen dough although don't tell me about it, it's easier to make some.  I'll do a tutorial of that in the next day or so.  I just had to get this out...  crazy.good.

Play with your dough... next time I'm putting butter and citrus sugar, lemon and orange, between the layers and will drizzle lemon icing over it... oh yeah baby! 

/enjoy

Oh and not to be left out, here's the single white sandwich loaf... perfect! :) 


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