Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread
Forewarning: this is time-consuming (~3.5 hours, mostly waiting).
But absolutely delicious and definitely worth the effort.
Both my friend Sabrina and I drooled over the shots of this bread and independently put it on our must-bake lists, waiting and waiting for the day to arrive. And then it came. And we mixed and kneaded and sprinkled and cut and stacked and folded and waited and waited and waited. Finally, we consumed it with a speed that can only be described as that of Buzz Lightyear flying across Andy's room. Because it was that good.
You can find the original version here; I've adapted this one for clarity's sake, and because we did a few things differently.
Like Joy, we made it without an electric mixer of any kind. We went classy with a big plastic spoon. Easy.
Things you will need:
a pastry brush
a bowl for the dry ingredients
a bowl to whisk the eggs
small saucepan for melting butter (or small bowl if microwaving)
plastic wrap
clean kitchen towel
9x3x5" loaf pan
optional: another bowl if you don't want to clean the earlier ones
2 3/4 cups plus 2 tbs all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
2 ounces (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted until browned
In a large mixing bowl, mix together only 2 cups of the flour, then the sugar, yeast, and salt. Set aside.
Whisk together eggs. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, melt butter and mix in milk. (Attempt the microwave at your own peril!) Remove from heat.
To the milk mixture, add the water and vanilla extract. Let stand--Joy suggests until it's 115 degrees or so, but we actually forgot about it and ended up not having any problems.
Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients bowl.
Add the egg mixture. Mix until the eggs are incorporated.
Then add another 3/4 cup of flour. Stir with spatula for about two minutes; the mixture will be sticky.
Letting it Rise:
Place the dough in a large greased bowl (If you put the rest of the butter on a plate (you'll use it for the filling anyway), then you can just grease the bowl with the wrapper.)
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel. Place in a warm space and let rest for about an hour, allowing the dough to double in size.
While it rises, make the filling:
Whisk together sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.
Melt the rest of the stick of butter until browned. Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the middle.*** THIS IS IMPORTANT. The reason we burnt the top is because I forgot to move the rack. :/
The fun part:
Deflate dough and knead in the remaining two tablespoons of flour.
Let rest for a few minutes.
On a lightly floured--or covered in a long piece of parchment paper--tabletop, roll it out! Go for a rectangle about 12" x 20". It's not a big deal if you don't succeed in actually making it a rectangle, but the general size is important. We ended up with an oval, and it was fine.
Paint the dough with the pastry brush and the butter you melted earlier.
Sprinkle the sugar mixture around the dough--it doesn't have to be perfect, as you'll probably have to push it around again when you stack them. And yes, it's a lot of sugar!
Slice the dough the short way into six strips.
Stack them on top of each other--this can get messy! Make sure you have something under first strip to catch all of the sugar that will fall off. Make sure to spread out the sugar evenly; when we attempted it, all of the sugar slanted to the middle!
Slice it into six pieces once again. They'll hopefully be rectangles.
Stack the pieces in the loaf pan, so that there's cinnamon sugar inbetween each rectangular slice. You'll need to squeeze them together a bit so that all of them will fit in the length of the pan. The stack won't span the entire width of the pan, but it's bread--it will expand!
Stick a kitchen towel over it and allow to sit in a warm place for another 30 minutes--I know, the patience this requires is the hardest part. Grab a good book, or watch an episode of HIMYM.
Stick it in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is very golden brown. It'll look like it's getting a little crispy, but that crisp is perfect with the barely cooked middle.
EAT. (Joy suggests, you know, taking it out of the pan and allowing it to rest for 20 to 30 minutes. But you've already waited so long and you can't sit there smelling the bread and continuing to resist it--that's just too much self control. So just eat it. With your hands. Out of the pan. That's the way the cool, starved, and impatient college kids do it.
Best served right after being made--so go and share it! It can, however, be wrapped and kept at room temperature for a day or two, if it can really survive that long without being devoured.
Adapted from Joy the Baker.
