Thanksgiving is Thursday, and I know that we are all very busy, but I just wanted to share this one recipe.
Just really quickly.
I’d been planning on making this bread for so long but have had a long succession of extremely busy weekends, and then… we had a stormy weekend that made me want to stay in PJs all day and do nothing but bake.
So I did.
So I’ll share just this one recipe and then I’ll let you relax and then I’ll relax too, because it’s almost Thanksgiving. And we are all very busy.
Too busy to write, too busy to read, too busy to even think sometimes.
So don’t think, just look at this warm, cinnamony, pumpkiny, pull-apart loaf.
Now, yes, I realize it’s CALLED a pull-apart loaf and we just spent countless minutes (ALL THE MINUTES!) slicing and stacking and cutting and piling, so it is only logical that the best way to eat it would be to pull it apart. That being said, I assure you that is just as good, if not better, sliced. That’s right, I said it, SLICED! Sliced just like a real loaf of bread.
In fact, I found slicing the bread to be a much more efficient way of stuffing the bread into my face. I wish I had taken a picture of how pretty the sliced bread looked, but again, the face-shoving prevailed. Plus your fingers get sticky with the sweet sugary insides (and outsides) and who wants to handle a camera with sticky sugar fingers when the other option is to lick the sweet sugary goo off of your fingers? Not this girl, no sir.
However, that whole pull-apart thing is much better for acting like you’re going to have “just a bite” and walk away, plus it makes a darn good-looking loaf of bread. I mean, sure you could save all that time and just make a “swirl” bread but then it wouldn’t look this awesome. The outside would be boring, like plain bread. As you can see, the outside of this bread is way awesomer than regular bread.
Shall we compare?
On the left you will see a loaf of someone else’s cinnamon swirl bread that I found by googling “cinnamon swirl loaf”. I’m sure it is perfectly delicious loaf of bread on the inside, but how do you know that it’s awesome from the outside? You don’t. For all we know it’s a loaf of plain bread that is just masquerading as cinnamon swirl bread.
By contrast, the bread on the right is obviously awesome or at least filled with stuff, which gives it a much greater potential for awesome.
To review: Left = Boring; Right = Exciting.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, slicing.
I sliced the remainder of my loaf and stuck it in the freezer, so that future Natalie & Fiance can have pumpkin french toast.
(Note: To this point I have continued to refer to my beloved Fiance as “BF” out of sheer laziness, plus I kinda think the word “fiance” sounds pretentious. It does a little bit, doesn’t it?)
I’m such a thinker, always watching out for future Natalie & future Fiance and their tummies.
I was originally going to make a filling with some spices and pumpkin puree, but then I saw a jar of pumpkin butter in the pantry so I just went ahead an slathered it on.
And it was good.
So good.
Of course, I couldn’t resist a bit of a glaze on top. Apparently I’m on a glaze-kick though.
If that’s a thing.
I think it is.
I’ll warn you now that I’m not doing a Thursday Things for this week, because it’s Thanksgiving and that would just be silly… Hopefully this recipe will help to keep you company in my place.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
This recipe makes 2 loaves but it can easily be halved to make just one loaf, or you can make two different kinds of loaves filled with cinnamon-sugar
Ingredients
- 1 recipe of your favorite cinnamon roll dough (my favorite recipe below)
- 2 10-ounce jars pumpkin butter
- 2 cups milk
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 packet active dry yeast
- 4 cups + 1/2 cup all-purpose flour; divided
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
- 2 teaspoons milk; plus extra if needed
Instructions
- In a large (8 cup) saucepan, mix the milk, sugar, and vegetable oil. Heat over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and the mixture is steaming. Remove from heat and cool to luke-warm (110-115F degrees), then add the yeast. Stir to combine; let sit 5 minutes to allow yeast to bloom.
- Stir 4 cups of flour into the milk mixture and put lid on the pot. Allow to sit for 1 hour, or until doubled in size. Once the dough has risen, add remaining dry ingredients and stir to combine. Pour dough out onto a large sheet of saran wrap and wrap dough tightly. Place in refrigerator for 1 hour or up to overnight. (You could also roll the dough out immediately by sprinkling the counter with flour and kneading until the dough is no longer sticky. Once the dough isn't sticky, cover with a kitchen towel for 5 minutes to allow the dough to rest)
- Pour dough onto lightly-floured surface and separate into two equal halves. Roll one half to a 12 x 20-inch rectangle and cover the other with a kitchen towel to prevent from drying out. Cut the rectangle lengthwise into 6 long 2-inch wide strips.
- Spoon generous amounts of pumpkin butter onto one strip of dough top with another strip and spoon pumpkin butter onto that strip, repeat until all of the strips are in a pile and smeared with pumpkin butter.
- Slice the strip of dough into 5 4-inch wide strips. Stack strips tall-wise into a loaf pan. It will be sloppy, they'll flop everywhere, it's OK. I actually propped my bread pan on its side to make the first few strips a little easier.
- Repeat steps with other half of dough and pumpkin butter.
- Cover and let rise 20 minutes while the oven preheats.
- Preheat oven to 350F. Once dough has risen and oven is preheated, cook bread 45 to 55 minutes until cooked through. If the top starts to get too brown, lightly tent with a piece of foil and continue cooking.
- Cool in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto cooling rack to continue cooling.
- Mix ingredients together, adding more milk if the mixture is too thick or more powdered sugar if the mixture is too thin.
Notes
*Those of you who thermom your bread want the final temp to be between 190F and 200F.
*Glaze is entirely optional, if you do use a glaze be sure to pour it on while the bread is still nice and warm.
*This recipe makes two loaves of bread. I made my second loaf into a different flavor (COMING SOON...)
. If you don’t own this book, quickly run to amazon (or your local bookstore, whichever you prefer to support) and pick up a copy right now. Like, “now,” as in before you even finish reading this post.
