Raisin Bread

Raisin Bread

A good friend who has a bread maker told me he made a loaf of raisin bread and took it to his mom for a treat. Just mentioning raisin bread got my husband and I salivating. In saner times I’d pick up a loaf now and then at the grocery store, but these are really unprecedented crazy times - not going to the store anytime soon. I have been making my own bread for many moons and I always use part of the dough for cinnamon buns, just roll it out and spread butter, cinnamon and sugar on top, jelly roll it up and cut into pieces. They are delicious and don’t last very long, grazed on until gone, usually in a day or two. But I’ve never made raisin bread and wouldn’t want to make a whole batch (5 loaves) cause there’s only two of us and I don’t have sufficient freezer space to store the extras. But I guess isolation brings on the desire to try new things in the kitchen so....

I made my usual bread dough adding only 10 of the 12 cups of flour called for in my recipe. I separated off 2 cups of this mix to a separate bowl and let the two batches rise in their covered bowls. Since I hadn’t added all the flour yet the first rise was somewhat gooey. I sprinkled cinnamon over the top of the risen dough in the small bowl, added approximately 1/8 cup sugar, 1/8 cup butter and a handful off softened raisins (I boiled the  raisins in a bit of water to plump them up) and mixed all this in. I kneaded the two batches separately on a heavily floured counter to arrive at a more bread like consistency, left them to rise again. After this second rising I formed 3 regular loaves, one raisin bread loaf, and one batch of cinnamon buns, let all rise again and baked at 375 till done.

I’m happy to say my raisin bread turned out quite yummy and went as fast as  the cinnamon buns, a couple more slices and it’s gone.

🎶 Mama’s little baby loves raisin, raisin, mama’s little baby loves raisin bread 🎶