Cinnamon-Raisin Bread
This basically Joe Ortiz' idea. The underlying loaf is a challah (a not terribly sweet, not terribly rich challah, just a nice one). I made up his recipe last night, which produces 2.5 pounds of dough (6 cups of flour, to give you an idea of how much dough). I think you could use any challah or brioche, but I do like the 'not too sweet, not too rich' part. If you go too sweet or too rich, I think you just get a giant cinnamon roll (not that this is a bad thing..)
Anyways. This makes two loaves, and into each loaf knead (at the very end of kneading) 4-6 ounches of raisins (amount to taste -- these have about 4 ounces of raisins per loaf). Rise and so on per instructions for your challah recipe.
Make up a glaze: a whole egg (or about half an egg is enough, really, for two loaves) beaten with a little milk.
Make up some cinnamon sugar: 2-3 Tablespoons sugar and 1-2 Teaspoons ground cinnamon (vary amounts according to taste), per loaf. The loaves below are right around the middle -- about 2.5 T sugar, 1.5 tsp cinnamon each.
When it's time to form up loaves:
- Make up each loaf as a loose round and let rest 10 minutes.
- Flatten each round out to an oblong 12-18 inches or more long, and roughly as wide as your loaf pans are long. As long as possible, really.
- Place the oblong with one end toward you.
- Paint the surface of the flattened oblong with the egg glaze, except at the far end leaving and 1 to 1.5 inches un-painted.
- Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture over the painted part. You should get a nice layer, covering the dough completely with a moderately thick layer (1/8" maybe? A little less?)
- Roll up starting at the end near you, and stretching as you go: roll a little, then kind of tug the rolled-up part gently toward your belly as you roll more. You're trying to maximize the number of turns you can get out of the oblong before it's all rolled up.
- Seal using the unpainted far end.
- Flip the roll over, seam side down, tuck and fuss with the ends a bit to try to seal them a bit.
- Place in GREASED AND FLOURED loaf pan! Greasing AND flouring might be a bit much, but these loaves can get mighty sticky what with the egg in the dough, and the sugar, and everything.
Bake per instructions, but a bit longer. Say another 5 to 8 minutes. I glazed the top of each loaf with the egg/milk glaze just before loading into the oven, and again after 15 minutes.