Glazed Cinnamon Chip Loaf

To celebrate the return of our morning lab meeting, I decided to bring a breakfast sweet loaf last Wednesday. The creation of this loaf was inspired by Great Harvest Bread's cinnamon chip bread that Kristina brought couple of times to the lab a while back, which I love. The cinnamon chips scattered throughout the bread result in pockets of sweet cinnamon goodness (think chocolate chip cookies, but with cinnamon flavor); it's not sticky like cinnamon roll, and not dry like those grocery-store style cinnamon swirl bread either. It's just perfect.

I must say I'm pretty stingy and not going to pay $5 (or whatever it is) for a loaf of bread, and I've been planning on recreating this loaf for a while. I've been looking for these cinnamon chips on the grocery store, but found out that they're not so easy to find (every time I passed by the baking aisle, I looked for these guys). Not too long time ago, I went to the Metropolitan Market in Wedgwood looking for non-ultra pasteurized heavy cream (as a poor grad student, I don't normally venture to upscale grocery), and stumbled across a full shelf of cinnamon chip bags, ON SALE, so I grabbed 3 bags (made a giant batch of pumpkin cinnamon scones, recipe from King Arthur's). And now, I have my stock of cinnamon chips, ready for making the cinnamon chip loaf! I made this recipe with cottage cheese for extra moisture and soft texture and yogurt which gave a nice tang, reminiscent of sourdough (sadly I killed my sourdough starter a while back, despite my cell culture experience, so I had to find other way to create tangy bread). I think you can replace the cottage cheese with more yogurt too if you like it more sour, never tried it, but don't see why it wouldn't work. If the dough turns out to be too wet, just add more flour.

Cinnamon Chip Bread Loaf

1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup honey or plain yogurt
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp instant potato flakes (if you don't have any, just add extra flour)
2 tsp SAF yeast
1/2 cup cinnamon chips

*) Mix and knead dough (all ingredients minus cinnamon chips), by hands, stand mixer with dough hook, or if you're lazy like me, use your bread machine on dough cycle. Your bread machine will time the rise for you; if you don't use bread machine, shape dough into ball, cover with oiled saran wrap, and let rise for 1 hour at room temp. Punch down and flatten into roughly a rectangle using palm of your hands. Sprinkle cinnamon chips and briefly knead by hands to lightly disperse the chips. Shape dough into loaf, tuck the ends under. Let rise again for 1 hour, until double the size. Bake the loaf in preheated 350F oven for 1/2 hour. It's a sweet loaf, and it'll brown fast due to the sugar content, so watch for over browning (my loaf browned too much).

Cinnamon Glaze

1/2 cup cinnamon chips
2 tbsp milk

*) Melt the chips by microwaving them with milk, at 50% power for 30 seconds. Mix well and drizzle on top of loaf. Let cool to set.