Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Today I decided to switch things up with my bread making and try to make cinnamon swirl bread. The recipe I found was on this blog. The dough turned out to be a lot stickier than other bread that I've made, and it left me with with some unpleasant bread dough dingleberries between my fingers after I was kneading the dough. The bread rose more than others that I've made, but I think I used more yeast than the recipe called for. I need to work on my yeast conversion skills, between packets and out of a jar, or maybe it's all just the same. Alton Brown should do a show on bread baking.

Anyway, once the dough was done rising the first time, I spread a little melted butter on the dough, then sprinkled on a bunch of sugar and cinnamon. I added a little bit of brown sugar to the mix too, because I like it.

The instructions said to bake this loaf at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. I started to become a little suspicious of the recipe at this point, but I'd already made the dough. Normally, bread bakes for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees, at least in my kitchen, with the recipes I've been using. Sure enough, I read a few reviews of the recipe, and one person found the inside of the loaf to be raw and gooey. Reasons for that could be that the person used too much butter, or let it rise too long. I wound up baking it for about 35 or 40 minutes, and I tested for doneness with a thermometer (generally a loaf of bread baked in a loaf pan is done at about 190 degrees F).

This is what it looked like when it was finished:

Although it looks pretty delicious, I don't recommend this recipe, and I wouldn't make it again. I've made this bread the last couple times I baked bread, and I found it to be a much tastier recipe than the current one. The cinnamon swirl part tasted fine, but the bread itself was flavorless and not really worth eating. I'm thinking it might have something to do with the lack of butter/milk/oil (i.e., fat, a.k.a. flavor) in the recipe. In the future, I might try to make the regular white bread and swirl in the cinnamon. Or maybe I'll just try wheat bread next.