I love cinnamon raisin bread. Do you? Anyone? It’s problematic, though. The loaves at the store are small. And kind of stiff (although that makes for good raisin toast. Oooh, note to self, make some raisin toast). And expensive. Homemade recipes can be time-consuming and labor intensive. Enter the bread machine. Surely, the bread machine can save us – right?
Right.
Now, most bread maker recipes for cinnamon raisin bread that I’ve tried (and believe me, I’ve tried a few) have a few fatal flaws. They come out too dry, or too bland. They want you to mix the dough and then roll it up with more cinnamon and bake it in the oven. There just aren’t enough raisins.
After a bit of tinkering, I’m pleased to share with you my version of cinnamon raisin bread for the bread maker. There are no extra steps to perform – just put the ingredients in and set it – making it perfect for breakfasts. I’ve also made a few adjustments to the flavor: this loaf comes out moist and a bit dense, with a rich cinnamon flavor and plenty of raisins. Here it is!
Really Good Raisin Bread
Ingredients:
1 1/4 c milk
2 tbsp butter
3 c flour
1/4 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 c raisins
2 tsp yeast
Directions:
Add all ingredients to bread pan in the order directed for your bread machine. For me, that means liquids on the bottom, dry ingredients on the top, and yeast in the middle.
TIP: Don’t let your yeast touch your liquids, especially if you’re setting it to run overnight.
TIP #2: My directions said to add the raisins in at a special beep once the dough is mixed together – I did that and found that I ended up with a loaf of plain bread with raisins stuck to the outside. I put my raisins in with all my other ingredients, but I make sure they don’t touch the liquids or the yeast.
Set your bread maker to a ‘Sweet’ cycle if you have one. This recipe makes a 1.5 pound loaf. Enjoy it with some butter!
Hey, everyone! Sorry to be so long between posts. My mom and dad are visiting! It’s an event that happens only once every few years and so I’m going to be taking it easy the rest of the week. (Regularly scheduled blogging should resume on Monday.)
In the meantime, check out what I made this morning!
I used this recipe for oatmeal breakfast cookies (posted in 2007, whoa!), made a double batch, and pressed it out in a greased cookie sheet. I baked them at 350 degrees for 17 minutes, and there they are:
Oatmeal breakfast bars. They’re good – although a little thin. I’ve been searching for a storable, portable, toddler-approved healthy snack food (it’s harder than I previously thought) and I think that if I quadruple the recipe instead I’ll have something more like a soft granola bar. It’s worth a try!
This weekend I ran across a book that has me fascinated. It’s called The American Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Child, and it was originally published in… 1828. The entire text is available for free in a variety of formats at Project Gutenberg (I downloaded my copy to my Kindle) and it has made for some very interesting reading.
(As an aside, Lydia Child was an Abolitionist, a women’s right’s activist, and a voice for Native American rights decades before the Civil War broke out. Also, she wrote a poem that is still quoted today – the first two lines, anyway. Not bad for someone who’s been dead for 130 years!)
The book is dedicated to “those who are not ashamed of Economy,” and while some things are not exactly useful today (I’ll leave the herbal remedies and the tips on avoiding wear on my carpet-broom, thanks) there are a great many recipes, a lot of advice, and many of her observations are still relevant. Here’s a sample:
In this country, we are apt to let children romp away their existence, till they get to be thirteen or fourteen. This is not well. It is not well for the purses and patience of parents; and it has a still worse effect on the morals and habits of the children. Begin early is the great maxim for everything in education. A child of six years old can be made useful; and should be taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not been done to assist others.
Here’s another that I like:
Provided brothers and sisters go together, and are not allowed to go with bad children, it is a great deal better for the boys and girls on a farm to be picking blackberries at six cents a quart, than to be wearing out their clothes in useless play. They enjoy themselves just as well; and they are earning something to buy clothes, at the same time they are tearing them.
I’ve recently become interested in how food was prepared and preserved before refrigeration and mass production completely changed the game. Did you know that you can preserve fresh eggs for more than a year without refrigeration just by sealing the shell against air? No, really! There were lots of different ways to do it, like packing the eggs in salt or bran, coating them in paraffin, or placing them in a lime solution, but back in the day if you wanted your eggs between September and April, you had to lay them up against the winter. Crazy, right?
Mrs. Child had a great deal to say about things like living beyond your means and educating children, as well as general tips for health, life, and frugality. I’m serious about testing some of these recipes, though. Here’s her recipe for pancakes:
PANCAKES
Pancakes should be made of half a pint of milk, three great spoonfuls of sugar, one or two eggs, a tea-spoonful of dissolved pearlash*, spiced with cinnamon, or cloves, a little salt, rose-water, or lemon-brandy, just as you happen to have it. Flour should be stirred in till the spoon moves round with difficulty. If they are thin, they are apt to soak fat. Have the fat in your skillet boiling hot, and drop them in with a spoon. Let them cook till thoroughly brown. The fat which is left is good to shorten other cakes. The more fat they are cooked in, the less they soak.
* Baking soda can be substituted for pearlash.
I’m intrigued. At any rate, I’ll leave you today with one more thought from Mrs. Child:
The prevailing evil of the present day is extravagance. I know very well that the old are too prone to preach about modern degeneracy, whether they have cause or not; but, laugh as we may at the sage advice of our fathers, it is too plain that our present expensive habits are productive of much domestic unhappiness, and injurious to public prosperity. …It is not to the rich I would speak. They have an undoubted right to spend their thousands as they please; and if they spend them ridiculously, it is consoling to reflect that they must, in some way or other, benefit the poorer classes. People of moderate fortunes have likewise an unquestioned right to dispose of their hundreds as they please; but I would ask, Is it wise to risk your happiness in a foolish attempt to keep up with the opulent? Of what use is the effort which takes so much of your time, and all of your income? Nay, if any unexpected change in affairs should deprive you of a few yearly hundreds, you will find your expenses have exceeded your income; thus the foundation of an accumulating debt will be laid, and your family will have formed habits but poorly calculated to save you from the threatened ruin. Not one valuable friend will be gained by living beyond your means, and old age will be left to comparative, if not to utter poverty.
