9/10/2010 - Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread

This is a quick and easy bread that is made in one day. That was a little disappointing to me at first. I wanted it to be a dough that was refrigerated overnight so I could pull it out at 4:30am after M's nighttime feeding (yes, she's 7 months and still eating at 4am, but I'm ok with that), and bake it at 7am for yummy Saturday breakfast. The solution to this problem was to make the bread Friday evening so that it was a yummy Friday night bedtime snack AND a yummy Saturday breakfast.

I mixed and kneaded the dough and then quickly chopped my walnuts and measured and rinsed my raisins. The mounds of walnuts and raisins together looked to be equal to my volume of dough, and I wasn't sure how all of that goodness was going to go into that little ball of dough. But it did with some careful kneading. I set it in a bowl to rise and we put the kids to bed. Then I plopped down on the couch with J4 to watch Star Trek, the movie—the one about young Captain Kirk and Spock and time travel through black holes. I'm not a Trekkie, so I have no idea if that description actually differentiates this movie from any other Star Trek movie. The only other one I've ever seen is the one where Spock dies (he didn't die in this one, neither one of him). Once the dough had doubled, we paused the movie and I shaped my loaves by flattening the dough into rectangles, sprinkling liberally with cinnamon and sugar, rolling them up, and panning them. Then we watched another half an hour of so of movie before I preheated the oven and then dashed back to the kitchen again to pop them in. Fortunately, this was not a thinking movie. The loaves finished baking when we had about 15 minutes of movie left. PR instructs that these loaves should cool for at least an hour, preferably two hours, before being sliced. However, mine cooled for about 20 minutes.

This bread was perfect. It was excellent without any butter, and it made wonderful toast the next morning. The sweetness was just right, it's chock full of raisins, and I think the walnuts are what really made the flavor special. This is one that I need to remember to make again. And again, and again, and again.