Homemade Cinnamon Bread

Although I did make G those decadent chocolate chili ganache cupcakes for his birthday all he really asked for his on birthday was a loaf of cinnamon bread. And actually he meant for me to just buy a loaf at Metropolitan Market.

But given my slowly emerging and awakening baking confidence I thought, "Well why not attempt to bake a loaf of cinnamon bread myself?" I mean hey if I can spend 3 days making some scrumptious croissants I'm sure I can pull off a loaf of cinnamon bread. And in reflection we were both glad I actually gave this a try.

I found a very straight forward recipe on The Pioneer Woman. She has a fantastic step by step photo tutorial so how could I go wrong.

I started as usual gathering all of the ingredients.

And then I just jumped in full steam ahead. I'm in love with dough hook on my Kitchen Aid now. Who knew the magic it could do.

Like I mentioned the step by step photos really helped me so go check them out here.

It was pretty exciting to get my dough rising and rise it did after 2 hours.

Next I rolled it out, measuring to my loaf pan and trying to keep it rectangular.

I wasn't quite as successful with that part as you can see.

And then finally the fun part started. By this point it was really starting to feel like I was going to be successful with this baking endeavor.

After the second round of rising into the oven it went and after 45 minutes it was looking pretty gorgeous.

The house smelled amazing.

I let it cool and then we wrapped it in a towel to save for morning. G loved it, he ate 4  toasted and buttered pieces for breakfast on his birthday.

I did buy a loaf of cinnamon bread just in case mine didn't turn out (my baking confidence isn't totally stellar yet.) but it's in the freezer now because mine turned out fantastic.

We did several special things to celebrate G's 42nd but by far the cinnamon bread was his favorite present. Which of course made it 100% worth making for him.

The Pioneer Woman's recipe for Cinnamon Bread link.