Wednesday 16 March 2011

Pull-apart cinnamon–sugar bread



Once upon a time, about a quarter of a century ago, an aunt introduced me to toast sprinkled liberally with sugar and ground cinnamon. I couldn’t imagine anything tasting better than this ambrosia, and had every intention of never eating anything else when I grew up and could eat what I liked, except maybe liquorice bullets and Mint Slices and chicken-flavoured Twisties. But this passed, and I haven’t thought of cinnamon toast since I was a teenager.

Until now, thanks to a chance encounter with Joy the Baker.

This is cinnamon toast all grown up, with browned butter and rolled-out dough cut into squares and piled into a stack that goes not-too-evenly into a bread tin and is baked, so that its many points become crisp and its yeasty insides light yet moist and clingy as its warm segments are peeled away for breakfast. 


And it’s dead easy, as long as you don’t wake up of a morning and decide you want it then and there. A bit of pre-planning works well for the necessary risings. For example, say it was the evening before a public holiday, and friends were coming to have a late one and stay the night – the slices could be risen, the tin covered with Glad Wrap and bunged in the fridge to arrest further rising, then resumed in the morning. 

And should a guest decide to sneak back home at daybreak, before the fragrance of baking bread and cinnamon has a chance to waft through the house, well, they leave all the more for the rest of us. O Glenn – all this, all this could have been yours.






1 comment:

  1. Why Oh Why didn't anybody stop me before my premature departure?!
    And how deep in my pinot was I when this was all being discussed the night before?
    However - thanks to modern home delivery services - I am currently typing with moist cinnamony fingers, and marvelling at the very same pull-apart, which has just come out of a warm oven. While I can't comment on what must have been a truly glorious turning-out, it remains to this day, delicious.

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