In four earlier posts (pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4) I experimented with cornmeal and molasses bread, switching corn into an oatmeal bread recipe and swapping molasses for honey. It was interesting, but left a lot of room for improvement. This version is based on the Anadama Bread recipe and formula in Peter Reinhart’s book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
In my first try at making Cinnamon Swirl Bread the loaf came out with about 1 and 3/4 turns in the swirl. The swirl also cut a path through the slice so that it had a tendency to unwind. I wanted to get it to stick together across the swirl, so I rolled the dough thinner and got more swirl, but these slices tended to unwind as well. Since I was only making one loaf to try the swirl I used the bread machine again to make the dough. The recipe used was the same as the bread in the first try at Cinnamon Swirl.
Peter Reinhart in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
Variation 1 uses water as the liquid and has powdered milk as an ingredient. Here is the recipe to make two one pound loaves, the size specified in Reinhart’s book.
This bread is based loosely on the Master Dough with Starter from The Pizza Bible
I made the poolish version of the starter. It was easy to make and I made a lot more than I needed. It would have been hard to make less and still measure the yeast accurately. I mixed it up in a water glass, then covered it with plastic wrap and let it double in volume before putting it in the refrigerator over night to mature.
The left photo is the poolish after it had doubled and spent the night in the refrigeator. The right one shows the poolish out of the glass and on a plastic plate. The Pizza Bible had a hint about handling the poolish, which is really sticky. Dip your fingers in ice-water before you handle it and it won’t stick to you. I was pleased that the hint worked very well and I didn’t need to scrape all the poolish off my fingers after measuring it.