Baking day

Yesterday morning, I set the breadmachines going pretty early. The smaller machine was making an enriched dough, which I use to make cinnamon buns. Here is the dough when it has finished rising in the bread pan, and is ready to be turned out, kneaded again and shaped.

When the dough is nearly ready, I prepare the cinnamon sugar mixture, which is just a tablespoon on soft brown sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon, well mixed together.

The dough comes out and it is a fairly heavy, dry dough, so it is quite clean to work with and doesn't stick all over me or the worksurface. I knead it for a good few minutes.

After kneading, it is time to roll it out flat.

I brush it with a little water so that the sugar mixture sticks to the dough when I roll it out. The sugar is sprinkled over the dough and then the dough is rolled up from the longest side.

It ends up looking like this and it really doesn't matter that the ends are not even!

Now the roll has to be cut into slices, which are quite thin.

Once cut up, the slices are laid in an oiled baking pan, touching each other - squeeze them in!

I leave them to rise in the kitchen for as long as it takes - anything from half an hour to two hours depending on the warmth of the room. They look like these below when they are risen.

Then it is time to bake them. I put them into a 160C fan oven for about 15-20 minutes, until they are golden brown. Then I brush them over with a tiny bit of maple syrup to add some glaze and a little more sweetness. It certainly makes them look appealing!

The ingredients that I use are:

1lb strong bread flour, half a teaspoon salt, 4 tablespoons caster sugar, 4 tablespoons oil, 2 eggs beaten together with 6 fl. oz milk, and one sachet fast-action yeast. This is all put in to the breadmachine and put on the "Dough" setting.

Thanks for this recipe go to D&DD on the forums at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ who has a fantastic recipe for an Apple Braid, for which these ingredients form the basis. That recipe uses cooked apple, which doesn't go down well here, so I use the same basic idea to make the dough for the cinnamon buns - which go down extremely well.