Cinnamon-Raisin Toast! (how to get kids out of bed in the morning)

cinnamon toast2

Main kid-goal these days is to find new and interesting ways to entice kids out of bed in the morning. What seems to motivate them to leave their cozy beds is the promise of something tasty to eat. One morning: Cinnamon-Raisin toast. It did the trick, albeit slowly…

This is the Cinnamon-Raisin Bread from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (page 330), in 2 mini loaf pans…

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Start with 1 1/2 pounds of buttermilk dough (page 327), brioche dough (page 300), or any other dough that you love. Form it into a ball to create a smooth surface.

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Roll the dough with a rolling pin till it’s about 1/8″ thick.

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Spread 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 3/4 cup raisins. If you want more raisins, cinnamon or sugar, go for it! Add nuts, chocolate or whatever else will get your kids out of bed. There is nothing that says these fillings can’t be savory as well.

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Starting at the short end of the rectangle roll the dough and fillings,

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pinch the seam shut.

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Place in a well greased baking pan– in this case, I made a loaf that would fit into a mini loaf pan. Allow to rest for about 1 hour and 40 minutes, or until the dough no longer feels chilled.

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Paint the risen dough with egg wash and dust with sugar before baking.

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Bake for about 40 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes int he pan and then remove the bread to finish cooling.

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Allow to cool on the side so that the bottom crust doesn’t get soggy. Enjoy!

129 thoughts to “Cinnamon-Raisin Toast! (how to get kids out of bed in the morning)”

  1. Mmmmm I love raisins, but my family doesn’t. I made the olive oil dough for the first time yesterday. I made pocketless pitas for tuna melts last night and foccacia today to go with spaghetti for dinner. I love this book!

  2. This is one of my favorite breads too! I substitute one cup of whole milk yoghurt for the buttermilk (in the buttermilk bread recipe on pg 207). It works great. This bread is a crowd pleaser eaten great fresh on the day baked or toasted afterwards. It also seems to store well but never lasts long enough.

  3. I am not very fond of raisins
    either, so I usually substitute
    craisins. You can get them in
    various flavors. On Saturday I
    made a lemon, orange craisin,
    chocolate speckled pound cake.
    Thanks for the idea Zoe. I was just thinking today of what bread I was going to bring to work on Wed. I might try a mixture of craisin and mini chocolate chips (it won’t be toasted)instead of the raisins

  4. Hi Judy,
    You could even do a bread like this with olives. I’ve done it with caramelized onions and cheddar cheese.

    Hi Larry,
    I have been playing with yogurt in some doughs as well. I love it!

    Hi Erin,
    It is great that you have your little guy int he kitchen with you. My youngest son loves to bake.

    Hi Laura,
    Yeah, that sounds fantastic!!! My boys will be getting your version one of these days.

    Thanks, Zoë

  5. Yum. If enough of a loaf is left, it will make fantastic tuna melts. We learned that trick from an old Seattle restaurant called (appropriately) Mom’s.

  6. Hi Joannie,

    I’ve made a grilled cheese with the cinnamon-raisin bread, but a tuna melt is something I would never have thought to do. Thanks for the suggestion it is great!

    Zoë

  7. What a great way to get them out 🙂 I would wake up in the middle of the night to eat this…your shots are making me drool…I’ll have to make this some time…Excellent!!

  8. Just had to tell you that I have been adapting other recipes to your method. The William Sonoma flyer had a recipe for a raisin walnut loaf. You put the dough in a long cloche, let it rise, and then put it in a cold oven. You set the temp to 425 and bake for 45 minutes covered and then 15 minutes without the cover. I just used a “3 cups of flour” adaptation of your method and it was awesome. And,,,,,,I didn’t have that 18 hour wait. There is always a bucket(sometimes, two) in my fridge. It has become a great habit. Thanks so much.

    Rosemary C in San Jose, Ca., where it feels like fall this morning.

  9. Hi Rosemary,

    That is very exciting. I love that you are playing with the recipes and adapting others. I’ll check out this technique, it sounds very intriguing!

    Thanks, Zoë

  10. When I’ve made this bread, I’ve ended up with a big air pocket between the top level of cinnamon/raisin and the top part of the crust. Am I doing something wrong during the rolling?

  11. OOOh! I did what Larry Silva did and the bread is out of this world! Made into cinnamon bread made it even better! No more buying $6 loaves of it from the store!
    We can have it whenever we want now!

  12. Hi Amy,

    Try to make sure the dough is rolled up as tightly as possible. It may also be that your dough is rolled out slightly too this and there is not enough weight on that top layer.

    Try that and let me know if it fixes the issue.

    Thanks! Zoë

  13. Hi..
    I have a recipe request…
    our Wegman’s makes a wonderful Apple Cider – Golden Raisin bread in the fall. It also has chunks of apples in it, comes in a boule shape. It is great as is, toasted, used for grilled cheese or french toast. But since your book I hate to buy bread, although I did today, b/c it is so good.

    Any ideas on using apple cider in your bread recipes?
    And I am thinking the apple chunks would maybe not store well… maybe have to put those in and do rolled loaf like the cin-raisin bread?

    Thanks!

  14. Mandy: I’ve played with apple chunks and they seem to store well in dough, but keep it to 5 days. My guess about apple cider is that the acid will weaken the gluten, giving you a very large-holed bread that might spread sideways a fair amount. Could be delicious and rustic though. Let us know how it turns out. Jeff

  15. How many mini loaves did you get out of the 1 1/2 lb. of dough? I have 4 mini pans and am thinking about doing 2-4 different fillings at the same time.

  16. Hello from rainy CT!

    I made three loaves (in 15 minutes) yesterday – 2 as gifts, 1 for us, of course. I can’t wait to toast up a couple slices.

    I also changed the recipe a little – I like to use more whole grains so I did 2/3 white, 1/3 whole wheat bread and then added extra buttermilk until the consistency looked right. I also added ground flax seed – I add this to any recipe I can, and as long as my son doesn’t notice it, he eats it – yogurt doesn’t work so well.

    It took longer to rise (might have been the cold kitchen), but turned out great. My son gobbles it up.

    I just gave this link to my friend for her 4 kids.

    Thanks!
    Nikki K

  17. Oh, I forgot to mention, I didn’t get 3 equal loaves out of this (not sure why), so I had to take the 2 smaller ones out first and watch the bigger one toward the end.

  18. Hi Nikki: It sounds delicious, and you’re anticipating our next book, which will have lots of whole grains, and yes, some flax.

    Thanks so much for sharing the links with friends. This is the only way to get the word out about one’s cookbook (unless one has a TV show!). Jeff

  19. I adore this book. I can’t wait for the new one to come out at Christmas time.

    I am making the buttermilk bread recipe with jalapenos to try out. I love jalapeno bread but never tried it.
    I am also anxious to make this cinnamon raisin bread.

  20. Thanks again Shannon, so sweet of you to say. Welcome to the site, come back anytime you have questions, or just to let us know how it’s going. Jeff

  21. I am so thrilled with this book! My sister gave it to me for my birthday, one month ago, and I’ve had so much fun with it! We’re going to give it to my mom for Christmas, and my sister’s going to get a new pizza peel! 🙂
    Here’s my little tidbit: yesterday, I had it in my mind to make cinnamon-raisin bread. Except I didn’t have any raisins! So I subsitited dried cherries. But then cinnamon didn’t seem to fit, so I put in 1/2 teaspoon almond extract instead. It is the most heavenly cherry-almond bread. When I toast a piece of it for breakfast, the whole house smells heavenly!

  22. Thanks for this. I made a full size loaf using your master recipe, but w/ 1/3rd whole wheat. It came out *great*! For the full loaf, I doubled the brown sugar and the cinnamon, and just added raisins to cover. I had to let it rise about 4 hours (out of the fridge) to get it risen enough.

  23. Yep, up to a third heavier grains usually doesn’t make much difference in the recipe, that’s what we’ve found too.

    4 hour rise! Must have been a big one? Jeff

  24. i ended up rolling it from the long side but joined the ends and baked it in a bundt pan turned out lovely. i wanted to ask is it possible to adapt old favorites/classics to ur method? i just wanted to say that i vowed never to buy another cookbook coz ive got gazzillions but i have to break my promise just this once since ur book is like no other cookbook ive ever seen and i can’t stop talking about it and telling everyone i know. thanks

  25. Nads: Sure, you can certainly adapt most old recipes to our method. Takes a bit of trial and error.

    Thanks for the kind words!

  26. The blueberries will give off some liquid, so you may have to slightly decrease the liquid in the recipe.

    Or not! Give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Cinnamon’s to taste anyway, so you can drop that for sure.

  27. Hi
    I’ve been making the buttermilk dough and loving it! The raisin bread is next on my list, but the last two loaves have really stuck to the bottom and sides of the pan. I’m using canola oil to grease the non-stick loaf pan. Any ideas? Thanks.

  28. Barb: usually, greasing a non-stick pan works fine. How about some parchment on the bottom? Then all you need to do is run a knife around and it can’t miss.

  29. Just got your book, and it looks amazing! I am so excited to try some recipes, this one in particular. My question is… Mornings are already crazy with kids getting to school, anyway to do this bread the night before and just bake in the morning? It looks to be about a 2 hour process to get the bread rested and baked. Help!5am is just not doable for me.
    Any suggestions?? Thanks a million!

  30. Good Morning… I made this recipe and used the refrigerator rise method, this morning when I went to put the bread in the oven there was quite a bit of brown sugary looking liquid in the bottom of the pan. Wierd! Any idea why it did this?? What did I do wrong??It’s in the oven cooking now…not sure how it will turn out, but certainly don’t want that to happen again next time… Thanks for your suggestions!

  31. Stored dough occasionally does that, especially when it’s older. Just pour that stuff off next time. Should work out fine.

  32. Thanks so much for your suggestion Jeff, It was older dough and although it looked strange, it turned out pretty good. Maybe just a little dense. Any suggested recipes for bread dough that is getting old?? Thanks again for your awesome book, I am having so much fun making breads for the 1st time.

  33. Hi Allison,

    I usually use the older dough for some of our flatbread recipes like naan or pizzas or even the pletzel.

    The other thing you can do is add the ingredients for a fresh batch on top of the older dough and mix it all together. This will jump start the flavor in the new batch.

    Thanks, Zoë

  34. Thanks Zoe! Loved your suggestions and will definitely try mixing in older dough with the new next time. Someone asked me if I had made Monkey Bread yet?? Any recipes for that one?

    Thanks again for the awesome book, You two ROCK!

  35. Thanks Allison: we haven’t tried a monkey bread yet, but it seems that’s just a matter of how you shaped some enriched dough. Just try it with our Challah or brioche dough– will you let us know how it comes out.

  36. Thanks Jeff & Zoe for your great book.
    I am new to bread baking thanks to you! In the past when I read the word knead I froze. Now I just ignoe the word.
    Can’t wait to get the 2nd book. I hope it has a section of bread baking for dummies. You might even want to title it attention Dawn.
    While making the cinnamon raisin bread this morning I had to scour your book for the egg wash recipe. What you seasoned bakers take for granted is a loss to me.

  37. Hi Dawn,

    Thank you for the feedback! We hear you and are giving the recipe for egg wash where ever we list it in the new book.

    BTW it is just an egg + 1 tablespoon water whisked together.

    Thank you! Zoë

  38. I just tried this recipe and had to take a picture of it because I’m sure it’s not going to last long! Just heavenly! Like Alison, I had the dark liquid at the bottom of my loaf pan after it had risen; I wasn’t using the refrigerator method, just 1 hour 40 minutes on the counter. I had guessed it was from extra egg wash mixed with the brown sugar. I was a probably heavy handed brushing the wash on the dough. After baking there was a light crust on the bottom/lower sides of the loaf that were a delightful side effect of this. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t a problem and I’m glad I didn’t pour it off! My loaf pan is a Pampered Chef clay pan…it’s never gotten so much use in the 10-15 years I’ve had it, as it has in the few months since buying your book! Again…many thanks to both of you!

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