Do the twist - a good technique for rolled loaves

I tried a new-ish technique today for the Cinnamon Bread that I baked last week. I've found in the past that breads with stuff rolled up in the loaf (like cinnamon raisin bread) tends to end up with a spiral void in the loaf, and if you just add all the butter, sugar, cinnamon and raisins to the dough itself it's just not the same. And braiding this dough was just too difficult. So I used a technique I got from America's Test Kitchen for the Cinnamon bread today and it worked a treat. No raisins in this one, but cinnamon chips instead (though this would certainly work for raisins). I think I got this from their recipe for Babka, actually.

Anyway, this is a bread with a poolish starter. Today I put all the white whole wheat flour in the poolish, then made the dough with AP flour. There is olive oil and sugar (I used organic cane sugar) in the dough, but I put in less of both than I would in this dough normally. The rest of the oil and sugar got spread on the dough along with cinnamon and the chips, then rolled up jelly roll style.

This is a very soft, stretchy dough so quite easy to pat out then roll. The roll was then flattened slightly and cut length-wise into two strips. Each strip was turned cut-side up, stretched a bit then the two strips were twisted together, and the ends pinched shut. It then fit snugly into a greased loaf pan.

It's a bit labour intensive but goes fairly quickly. However, I had to make fourteen of these today (!), and by the time I got the last ones in pans the first ones were fairly bursting out and ready to bake!

They baked up light, fluffy and very attractive.

I might try this technique with other things as well, like certain kinds of cheese or fruit / veggie chunks. Or chocolate, of course. :)