I didn’t take many pictures of this bread (none of the baking process), but I love this picture of my favorite way of eating it: toasted and loaded with butter. Highly fattening, and highly delicious.
The recipe for this bread is actually titled “Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread”, but I decided to skip the walnuts. I love nuts (and one of my favorite breads is a walnut ficelle from a local bakery), but I wanted this bread to be simpler and maybe, thus, more attractive to my daughter.
The recipe as written calls for mixing the cinnamon directly into the dough, but the recipe commentary suggests doing a cinnamon-sugar swirl, which immediately called to mind the bread on the cover of the very first bread book in my memory.
This is the book and bread that first enticed me to try to make my own bread. We’d had the book in our kitchen my entire life, and I used to stare at the cover as a kid and try to imagine how in the world you could make that swirl in the bread. It never dawned on me until I tried to make it (as a teenager) that it was simply a matter of spreading the cinnamon on rolled out dough and then rolling the dough into a cylinder. I guess most any child today knows about that technique from playing with Fimo.
Anyway, my goal in this BBA challenge was to sort of replicate that childhood cinnamon swirl loaf, but I figured that the BBA recipe would be better. Remarkably, though, the recipes are quite similar (the childhood loaf calls for all milk vs. milk and water in BBA, and the childhood loaf definitely has more sugar and significantly more flour, even though both recipes make two loaves. Weird.)
One other nod to my childhood: I used golden raisins (which my Canadian grandmother always called “sultanas”) because I love them and I thought the color would be beautiful in the bread.
Overall, I’m happy with the resulting bread, though I’m a little sad about the gapping that happened at the cinnamon swirl line.
I don’t know what caused that. Maybe too thick a layer of cinnamon-sugar (I used the amount specified in the commentary)? Maybe I should have buttered the dough rectangle before spreading the cinnamon-sugar to help seal things better? The gap makes the bread a bit tricky to slice and butter, but I don’t think it’s affected the rate at which I’m gobbling the loaf down.
Grongar 
Great photos. I too liked this bread toasted. HUM, we could have made great french toast with it couldn’t we?
Great job,
Susie
That toast photo makes me want to bake this bread all over again.
How nice to revisit childhood memories! Your toasted bread shot makes me very hungry. I think to avoid the gap you could have buttered the dough and also rolled a bit tighter. I had the same issue and may try that next time.
Thanks! Yes, definitely could have rolled tighter. It was pretty snug, but I didn’t apply max. pressure.
Yum! Your toast looks great. Excellent photos.
The oven spring is what caused the gap.
To get less of a gap, over proof your bread a bit and don’t use any steam or spritz the bread with water.
Thank you! Overproofing is a good idea. I didn’t do steam or anything for this loaf. I’ll give it another shot, eventually!
Lovely breads, as usual. I could eat right off the page!
I just can’t wait to see your Marbled Rye Bread, BBA Challenge Week 19.
Kay
All your breads look just wonderful and I just can’t wait to see your Marbled Rye Bread for the BBA Challenge Week 19!
I plan to make that one but I’m waiting for yours first!
Kay from Montreal
That gap is a good thing – I’d fill it with apple something like a thin layer of applesauce with chunks of apple.
Your first photo is really good. Toasted and buttered – yum!
Nice loaves, love the swirl despite the gap.
Golden raisins are called Sultaninen here in Germany, and refer to a specific type of raisin. Still, they look great in the bread. I may also do this when I re-do my recipe.