An easy-to-make rich, buttery brioche with a flaky crust and a tender, light and fluffy crumb. It’s braided to create beautiful, delicious, sweet cinnamon swirls.
My Secret Recipe Club blog this month is the Cooking Rookie aka The Cook Book of Trial and Error. Elana’s a bread lover and has 26 bread recipes on her blog. Since I’m a bread lover too, baking a bread recipe from her delicious site was an easy choice.
The hard part was narrowing it down to just one recipe. I decided to use her rating system to decide, and she gave a five star rate to the brioche bread she made from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.
The Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day cookbook is one I use often, but I have to admit we love the artisan bread so much that I haven’t tried many of the other recipes. So after reading Elana’s rave review, I decided it was high time to try the brioche recipe.
Cook’s Illustrated recently developed a Cinnamon Swirl Bread recipe that I’ve been wanting to try. So I decided to combine the easy brioche dough recipe and use the filling and braiding technique from Cook’s Illustrated.
The Cook’s recipe uses a dry filling made with powdered sugar that is spritzed with water after it’s sprinkled on the dough. This prevents the filling from leaking out and the huge gaps that you’ll often see in Cinnamon Bread. I was so impressed with the results. I loved the beautiful swirls and braided top.
Elana made French Toast with her brioche and I couldn’t resist making French Toast with mine. To the eggs and half and half I added a little brown sugar and cinnamon, and a splash of vanilla. It was the best French Toast I have ever had.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
- 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
- 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 8 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
- 7 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I only used 6 1/2 cups)
- Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container overnight and use over the next 5 days.
- 1 cup confectioners sugar
- 3 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions
- Mix the water, yeast, salt, eggs, honey and melted butter in a 5-quart bowl, or lidded (not airtight) food container.
- Mix in the flour, using a spoon until all of the flour is incorporated.
- Cover (not airtight), and allow to sit at room temperature for about two hours until the dough rises and collapses.
- Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container overnight and use over the next 5 days.
- Assembling the Cinnamon Swirl Brioche
- Grease three 9 x 4 inch loaf pans.* Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and divide dough in three equal pieces. On a well floured board, pat each piece into a 7 by 18 inch rectangle. (If necessary, use a bench scraper to loosen dough and add more flour underneath the dough so it doesn't stick.)
- Use a spray bottle, lightly spray the top of the dough with water. Sprinkle a third of the filling mixture over the dough leaving a 1/4 inch border on the sides and a 3/4 inch border on top and bottom. Spray filling lightly with water so the filling is speckled with water.
- Starting on the short side, roll the dough up into a cylinder and seal seam. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
- Use your bench scraper to cut the loaf in half lengthwise; turn halves so cut sides are facing up. Gently stretch each half into a 14 inch length. Pinch the two ends of the dough together and braid dough by laying the left piece over the right keeping the cut side up, until pieces of dough are tightly twisted. Pinch ends together.
- Transfer loaf, cut side up, to prepared loaf pan. Repeat with remaining dough.
- Cover pans loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled in size. Top of the loaves should rise about 1 inch over the lip of the pan. (Mine took 3 hours, but the Cook's recipe says 1 1/2 hours.)
- Preheat oven to 350º. Bake approximately 25 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Reduce oven temperature to 325º, ten loaves with foil and continue baking until internal temperature registers 200º, 15 to 25 minutes longer. (I just got a new wireless thermometer - thanks Tiff! - and it took my bread exactly 15 minutes longer.)
- Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Remove loaves from pans and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing, about 2 hours.
- *You can bake all three loaves at once, leave the dough in the fridge for up to five days, or freeze the dough.
Notes
adapted from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and Cook's Illustrated
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I love to bake, especially cookies, cakes, and pies. I’ll post my adventures in the kitchen, my favorite new recipes, as well as our family favorites.
There is a restaurant in St. George that makes French Toast from cinnamon bread and it’s wonderful!
I can’t wait to give this one a try!!!
Your bread is just super looking. Wish I had a piece of it right now to devour.
A beautiful brioche! So tempting.
cheers,
Rosa
Hi Barbara, wow, what a beautiful swirl! I make them too from time to time, but they never look as good and straight as yours
. I am glad you liked the Brioche. Reminds me that I should make it again. Thanks for the kind words about my blog! Happy Easter and have a great week!
Yum, this brioche looks fantastic! Love the cinnamon swirl.
This is one beautiful brioche and I love the cinnamon flavor. I think, I am addicted to cinnamon. This is a wonderful choice.
MY! This is beautiful! I forget brioche has a lot of eggs. I wish I could get a slice of that!
wow this looks amazing!! great idea making french toast – another favourite.
Gorgeous! Great idea to use it with French toast!
That looks amazing.
Downright sinful that french toast looks. Oh my heavens, you should run a bed and breakfast.
This bread sounds so delicious! Yum!
Looks delicious! I can almost smell it through the screen.
could life get any better? I think not- this is PERFECTION!
Wow! So so so beautifull!
And I love brioche…
I´ll try for sure!
Congrats!
Simone.
What a beautiful loaf! I love how a simple technique creates such a complicated-looking effect. I’m totally adding this to my list of things to bake… it looks like a great project for a lazy weekend day.
This looks devine! Baking bread is something I love to do but don’t get the chance often enough!
Gorgeous!
Oh, you make me wanna bake Barbara!
Looks yum and I can just about smell it!
oh brioche…i love it so much! this sounds absolutely fantastic.
I love Brioche. The swirls are beautiful. I bet that french toast was awesome
Thanks!
Ooh wow this looks delicious. I might have to whip up a batch this weekend. I have a friend visiting and she would love this!
OHHHHHHHH MY……………does that ever look heavenly. And here I came home with 2 dozen FRESH eggs from our daughter’s friend who has chickens-and I had no idea what to do with them.
BOY I hope I can carve some time out this week to make this bread. We’re finally getting some rainy weather coming in for a few days-the perfect weather to bake…especially bread.
Thanks SO much Barbara………what a fantastic post-that is one beautiful bread.
Carol
Mmm, that does look good and definitely seems perfect for French toast! Great pick.
reading this after my breakfast… yet that french toast is calling out to me ..the braid really looks amazing!!
Love the swirls and braids. Beautiful bread.
Mum you got the most perfect swirls on your loaf! It’s a work of swirly art!
xxx
Very interesting brioche, I’m so excited to taste the deliciousness of this recipe… Yummy!
That bread is absolutely GORGEOUS!!! Have to try this one.
This looks amazing, Barbara – I have never made brioche, but this makes me want to ry!
This looks wonderful. I’ve made the brioche from abin five but I have been wanting to try that braid for awhile. Glad to know you like this filling. I’ll be trying this recipe next. Thanks for the information and inspiration.
What a beautiful Brioche!!!!!! Love the French toast. Yours are so perfect and look so scrumptious
This type of brioche is truly delicious, thanks for sharing with us a kind of recipe…:)
Yummy… maybe even I could pull this off. I think I need my super, duper helper though… it would be more fun!!!
This is absolutely beautiful. Makes me want to run to the kitchen an bake up a loaf.
Maybe I will do that tomorrow morning.
Oooh, I just made that cinnamon swirl bread from CI, it is fantastic! Your bread looks perfect! I really need to pull out my copy of Artisan Breads more often, it’s full of recipes I bookmarked.
Brioche is definitely one of my favorite breads, and I’m loving this cinnamon swirl in there. Great idea on the french toast – I’m sure they were to die for!
Your brioche bread looks fantastic!
I saw this braiding method on Pinterest and tried it with wheat bread. Yum! Yours is beautiful!
Oh Barbara I’m a sucker for cinnamon swirl bread. Your bread turned out beautiful!! Would love a warm slice with butter…mmmm
I’ve made the Ain5 brioche but not the cinnamon swirl. I can only imagine how delicious the French Toast would be!! I must try this.
Just stunning! Making that spectacular cinnamon swirl brioche into French Toast is worthy of a holiday. Any time you’ve got room for a guest at breakfast, count me in!
What a stunning loaf of brioche, Barbara! It looks just perfect. I bet it would make some delicious French toast or bread pudding, too! Thanks for sharing.
This is absolutely beautiful Barbara! Easily the most stunning loaf I’ve ever scene. I’m pinning it now and putting it on my must try list!!
I’m always so impressed when people make breads and your brioche looks fabulous.
If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to check out my SRC recipe this month: Fruit, Nut & Poppy Seed Chicken Salad.
Lisa~~
Cook Lisa Cook
Wow, what a beautiful loaf of bread. I have never seen anything quite like it. i bet this tastes great toasted with a little bit of butter.
Brioche makes the best French toast so I can’t even imagine the level of deliciousness this loaf made. Such beautiful work.
Wow thats a lovely swirl Barbara…..looks yum!
I missed so much on your blog the past two weeks. Just getting back into the swing of things as things get better. That said..that is one gorgeous cinnamon swirl brioche. I made several the past two years, but none of them looked as beautiful as yours.
ahhhhh!! i love brioche and i LOVE cinnamon in my bread. food orgasm!
i’m new to making my own bread (and to tell the truth, have not been so successful thus far)… but i want this. badly. maybe i’ll try again.
happy src reveal from a group D member!
Hi Kristy Lynn – definitely keep trying. The more you make bread the easier it gets and the more intuition you’ll have for when the dough is just right. Thanks for visiting!