Mom's Famous Cinnamon Bread

For those of you who don't know, my Mom is practically famous for her cinnamon bread. Last year, she showed me her trade secrets and for this first time, I made some of my own. I've made it a few times since then, and have had some great success as well as- I'll be honest- some pretty disastrous failures. I haven't been making bread for that long, so I still have a lot to learn, but I made it again this morning for our neighbors, and it turned out wonderfully. I used a different white (gasp!) bread recipe than she uses, and- don't tell Mom- but I actually liked it better than her recipe. We don't usually eat white bread, but I consider this stuff dessert, and we all know that I eat plenty of that!

PS- I just halved this recipe and got three mini loaves and one big loaf.

Grandma's White Bread

submitted by Brittany ~ sisterscafe.blogspot.com

2/3 cup powdered milk *see note

3 heaping Tbsp of instant yeast

6 tsp salt

2/3 cup sugar

6 Tbsp shortening (I'm sure you could use butter if you don't want to use shortening)

6 cups warm water

Flour (approx. 15 cups total)

*I have made this bread with fresh milk too and it works great. Just omit powdered milk and use 3 cups warm milk and 3 cups warm water in the place of the 6 cups warm water.

Mix powdered milk, yeast, salt, sugar, and shortening in large mixer like a Bosch. (*your Kitchen Aid is not big enough! It will handle a half recipe though.) Add warm water. Add about 4 to 5 cups flour and beat until well mixed. Add flour slowly until dough comes away clean from the edge of the mixing bowl. Allow to knead for 5 more minutes. Do not add too much flour. Cover with greased plastic and allow dough to rise. Once it has doubled in size, roll it out to about a 17x11 rectangle. Combine 1 cup granulated sugar to 1/2 Tbl cinnamon (more or less depending on your taste) in a small bowl. Spray (I used a spray bottle) the dough with a little water. Scoop cinnamon sugar mixture on to bread dough, distributing evenly, leaving about 1/2 in on all sides like this:


Roll dough, starting at long end until it forms a long log. Press ends together to seal cinnamon in.

Measure the approximate size of your dough pans and cut the dough accordingly, being sure to pinch and "seal" the edges each time. Place in dough pans and allow to rise until the loaves reach loaf size.

Heat oven to 350 and bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and allow to sit for 5-10 minutes and then invert loaves on to a cooling rack (if you leave the loaves in the pans too long, they will stick and you won't be able to get them out in one piece).