Cinnamon Spice and All Things Nice

After Sunday’s cheat bread, Tuesday morning called for the real deal. After a (very) lazy Monday, I decided that Tuesday would be my Monday and we would celebrate this by starting the day with cinnamon whirl pull-apart bread (I halved the quantities and it still made a gigantic loaf). Cinnamon whirls have always been my treat of choice from the bakery (alternating with iced buns in summer), and to this day I feel spoilt when I eat them. So as I was determined to start my Monday (Tuesday) well, I figured this was as good a way as any, accompanied by a steaming cup of coffee in my favourite Anthro tea cup made in my Moka from Italy (thanks Gem). Win-win.

Cinnamon is my favourite spice: I’m partial to a sprinkling with apple on my porridge, with any kind of latte but particularly chai, and in biscuits and banana bread. It is indulgence without the calories (kind of), which can only be a good thing in my book, and it’s kind of warming. My cinnamon bread featured cinnamon carried all the way to me from Jerusalem by Mr Hook, which I figure must make it more special than your standard Tesco dealio. As we wanted it to be baked for breakfast, I made the dough the night before, let it rise, and then put it in the fridge under clingfilm. It almost doubled again and was perfectly ready to use in the morning. 

Keep Rolling

I would so love to catch the smell of baking bread in a bottle.

My dad went through a year-long phase of baking bread in the machine overnight so that we would awaken to the scent wafting through the house, calling us from our cosy beds to trip across the chilly landing and into the kitchen for breakfast. Still warm, the bread would instantly melt the butter and I’d bite straight in while it oozed into the pores. It was the kind of bread that you could still squish into dough and I loved it.

My dad’s phase might have passed (sad face), but our love of good bread has not. On my last trip away, I arrived home with red onion and gruyere focaccia as a souvenir. Most recently, my housemates and I knocked up some bread twists for a gigantic Burns’ Night dinner party (18 guests in a 3-person house). We cheated – if you can call it that – and used ready-made bread mix; we are students, after all. We mixed and kneaded and plaited together, and watched the flour and water become dough, and the dough rise, and the risen dough become golden rolls, tappably hard on the outside and soft and white on the inside. Served with our cock-a-leekie soup, made with homemade chicken stock (it was a pretty old-fashioned weekend…), the rolls soaked up the goodness and made for a pretty exceptional centrepiece on our tartan table.