Italian Swirl Bread

Hello!

Yes, part 2 is coming, but I thought I’d let you know what’s going on first! 🙂

I have decided to start trying to post once a week. This should get rid of the long gaps between rapid fire machine gun posting.

A few days ago I got the baking bug, so I decided to make cinnamon swirl bread. I saw a recipe in one of Mom’s “Cooks Illustrated.” They take a recipe and work on it until it is “perfect,” so I thought this would be a good one to try. The article began by talking about how the author had been looking for the “perfect” cinnamon raisin swirl bread. None of them turned out how he wanted, until one day he found it.  In an airport in Japan, of all places! He later talked to a Japanese chef who taught him how to make it with the Japanese techniques that made the bread just right. As you can imagine, this kind of overwhelmed me. I had no Japanese flour or equipment, and although his actual recipe called for more common ingredients, it was still more than I was willing to do (have I mentioned it was 9pm?). I liked his method of incorporating the swirl. He used a style of rolling and twisting called a Russian braid.

I decided I didn’t want to make cinnamon bread, but Italian! I didn’t want to stay up all night waiting for my dough to rise though, so I decided to use Mama’s pizza  dough recipe.  The cinnamon bread recipe said it would be a very sticky dough, so the pizza dough worked great. It was so sticky in fact, that I couldn’t really work with it once I dumped it out of the KitchenAid. After some trial and error (and wrestling) I got the dough flattened out and cut in two. I put one half back in the bowl and spread my butter concoction on the other.  I rolled it up, cut it down the middle and twisted it up. After repeating the process with the other half, I put my bread in the oven.

And this is the deliciousness that ensued.Would you care to try for yourself?

2T yeast

2 C warm water

2 t honey

2t salt

1t oregano

2Toil

filling

1 stick butter, softened

2t oregano

2t garlic salt

5 cups flour (I have used all white and a mixture of whole wheat and white, I’m going to try it with all whole wheat but I haven’t yet)

Pour water in mixer bowl. Sprinkle yeast over water, let stand for 5 minutes. Stir in honey, salt, 1 t oregano and oil. Add 2 cups flour and mix. Change to dough hook and mix in the rest of the flour.

While dough is mixing, combine butter, garlic salt and oregano.

Split dough in half. Sprinkle flour on a flat surface such as a cookie sheet, cutting board or clean counter top, and flatten dough (might help to sprinkle flour over top of this too). Spread half of the filling on the dough and roll up. Using a sharp knife (I used a chef’s knife) cut in half long ways. Twist strands cut side up, fold in half and put in a greased loaf pan. Repeat with other half.

Preheat oven to 375 and bake for 35 minutes.

Hope this works for you! It’s one of our new favorites.