| This is my favourite recipe for cinnamon bun dough….it’s light, airy, not too sweet or rich and has a lovely flavour even without the filling and topping.
The author gives you a few ingredient options; I use unsalted butter, buttermilk (love the tang it provides) and unbleached all purpose flour for a more tender, less chewy bread. The only change I make is to replace the lemon extract with vanilla. The dough is easy to make and work with and is quite forgiving - I once forgot to cream the butter and sugar first, combining them with the other ingredients at the start, and since the dough still turned out well, I’ve been making it this way since. I usually make the dough and shape the rolls in advance, refrigerate overnight and allow 2-3 hours the next morning for proofing and baking.
I find that the filling recipe provided is lacking in cinnamon and the glaze is my least favourite type so I use these recipes to help create the perfect cinnamon bun!
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| I know from having made these a few times and from bloggers’ reports on the recipe not to expect them to have the fluffy texture and characteristic nooks and crannies associated with English muffins. However, they are relatively quick (3 hours) and easy to make, require no special molds that I don’t own and their flavour is far superior to store-bought.
I made this batch using ½ whole wheat bread flour. It added a delicious nutty flavour and didn’t seem to affect texture at all.
I used them to make delicious toasted breakfast sandwiches with tomatoes and grilled Canadian back bacon.
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| Loved this bread! Didn’t love the 3 days it took to make. The golden crumb is light and airy and the bread has a distinct nutty flavour.
It starts with a pâte fermentée, which rests in the fridge overnight. This is added to flour, both bread and semolina, water etc and the dough is kneaded and left to proof. The shaped loaf is refrigerated overnight before baking.
I didn’t have room in my fridge to allow 3 loaves of bread to rise so I made a half recipe only. I followed all of these steps because Mr Reinhart insists that it makes a huge difference to the flavour…..I’m not certain that my palate is educated enough to detect the differences and am tempted to make this as a 2-day bread. I still have a ½ batch of the preferment so that experiment may be taking place very soon….
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| I put off making this bread as I didn’t have all of the recommended ingredients and I’m usually a little wary of breads that rely on wild yeast alone. I finally decided to try it using my recently resurrected starter, “Vlad”, and ingredients I had on hand and I’m so glad I did.
It’s a 2-day (or more) bread that begins with a firm starter. On day 2, the flour (I used whole wheat bread flour which I didn’t bother to sift) salt and water are mixed together with the starter and the dough is kneaded. I made a half recipe so was able to use my stand mixer for this step. The recipe indicates that fermentation and proofing time is 6-7 hours – “Vlad” responded admirably to the current heat wave so these steps took only half the time.
I was very happy with the results: it’s a delicious, dense, chewy whole wheat bread with a definite sourdough tang and a lovely crispy crust. Definitely a recipe I will make again.
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| Wow! I really liked this bread which came as quite a surprise to me as I don’t usually enjoy breads/cakes laden with dried fruits. But there was something about the combination of the citrus and cinnamon flavoured yeast bread, which was quite tender and light despite containing all of that fruit, and the sweet fruit that hit just the right flavour note. The bread wasn’t overly sweet, depending almost exclusively on the fruit to provide the sugar, and the textural contrast of the crunchy almonds was very nice.
The bread was also very easy to make with minimal hands on time and average fermentation and proofing times. I decided not to soak the fruit in alcohol and I must admit to one major change….. I left out the candied fruit, the ingredient that stopped me from trying this recipe sooner.
With that omission, I’m not quite sure how authentic a stollen it was, but it was delicious!
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| An interesting and uniquely flavoured sourdough rye bread.
This is a 2-day bread that starts with a sponge made of barm, rye flour, water, and molasses that’s been heated with cardamom, anise, fennel and orange (I used orange oil). Bread flour and the balance of ingredients are mixed in after an overnight rest and the dough is kneaded briefly and left to rise. I’m accustomed to sourdough breads taking a long time to rise, which is why I don’t make them often, but even with yeast added in, the first proofing took 3 hours; I allowed the shaped loaf 2 hours to rise but it still wasn’t where it should have been. I took a chance and baked it anyway hoping for a huge oven spring.
I didn't get that but the resulting loaf actually had a very nice crumb, though I’m sure it would have been a little fluffier if I'd allowed it more time to rise. I really liked the complexity that the spices and orange added but I would have preferred the bread to be less sweet.
I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t think I’ll make it again.
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| This bread, which is intentionally made without salt, is soft, yet chewy and surprisingly sweet. But it’s clearly meant to be eaten with highly flavoured foods, or at least a sprinkle of salt.
The bread starts with a cooked flour and water paste that needs to be made at least the day before. Flour, yeast, a little olive oil and water are added to this and kneaded. I made a mistake when I added all of the water listed in the ingredients before reading to add only as much as required to reach a certain texture. I had to add more flour to compensate; quite a bit of kneading and a lot of flour later it finally looked like bread dough instead of play dough!
After the first rise the dough is shaped and left to rise again. It gets slashed and baked in a very hot oven with steam to create a crisp crust. It didn’t have much oven spring but the crumb seemed fine.
It’s not one of my favourite breads but it was quite good grilled and eaten with olive tapenade, and in a grilled cheese sandwich with basil and tomatoes.
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| This is fantastic bread that bears no relation to the dense, chewy, gummy whole wheat bread I’ve made in the past. The crumb is soft, light and airy with a delicious, nutty flavour.
Of course, you do have to invest a little time to achieve these results, though most is just waiting time. This is a 2-day bread that starts with a soaker of whole grain flour and water, and a poolish of whole wheat bread flour, water and yeast.
On day 2, these are combined with the remaining ingredients and kneaded. I included the optional egg and oil as I thought this bread would need all the help it could get. Next time I make it, I’ll exclude these to see what the difference is. After kneading, the dough is left to proof. I set aside lots of time (recipe says 2 hours) for this but it only took an hour. I shaped it into 10 buns as I was planning to serve them with grilled turkey burgers. The buns only took 45 minutes to rise and 22 minutes to bake.
Definitely a bread I would make on a regular basis.
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