Cinnamon Raisin Dutch Oven Bread

Who doesn’t love cinnamon raisin bread!? Better yet, fresh out the oven with a little butter. Yum!

This recipe creates a delicious, moist bread that will give your taste buds a little happy dance. Didn’t eat it all the first day? It’ll make a great bread for french toast.

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Prep: 1 hour

Rest Time: 12-18 hours

Cook Time: 40 min.

Makes: 1 loaf

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 1½ tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp yeast
• 1½ cups warm water

• 3/4 cup raisins

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, combine first 6 ingredients.
2. In a small bowl, add yeast to warm water (~105°-110°F) and let sit for 5 minutes.
3. Add yeast-water to the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or hand until combined.
4. Shape dough into a ball and leave in a large bowl covered in plastic wrap for 12-18 hours (over night). After the rest period (probably the next morning) check your dough. It will have risen and fallen and you should be left with a bubbly wet dough.
5. Add raisins to the bowl and combine by grabbing one edge of the dough and lifting it up and over onto itself. Repeat this four times until you’ve made a complete circle of folding in edges. Let rest for 15-20 minutes and then repeat the folding and rest stage.
6. After dough has completed its second rest stage, turn on your oven to 450°F and put in your dutch oven. Allow both to preheat while you prepare the dough.
7. Remove dough from bowl with floured hands and place on a floured counter top.
8. Shape dough into a ball. Sprinkle a little more flour on top if the dough is too wet. You don’t want the dough sticking to the counter top. Transfer dough to a piece of parchment paper and let dough rest on the counter for 30-45 minutes.
9. After rest time is finished, use the edges of the parchment paper to lift your dough and place in the preheated dutch oven. Using a sharp knife, make a light cut on the top of the dough in three parallel lines or an x shape. This gives the dough room to expand while it cooks.
10. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for 10 more minutes.
11. Let cool before cutting.

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  After 12 hour rest period

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  Folding over in step 5

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Hannah’s Hints:

Step 3: There is no need to knead this dough, but you can use your hands to knead briefly to ensure it’s fully mixed. I have also used the dough hook on my KitchenAid, however, I found it hard to judge the consistency of the bread and would often add more flour than needed, making for a more dense bread outcome.

Step 4: The dough will seem wet sticky. This is normal. It helps to ferment it slightly creating a similar style bread to sourdough. However, you should be able to shape into a rough ball. Add a little more flour if you’re unable to do so.

Step 8: When shaping the dough, try and tuck excess raisins underneath the dough. Any raisins that are exposed on the surface will get burnt.

When I transfer the dough to the parchment, I like to put a clean tea towel under the parchment so that the cool countertop doesn’t slow down my rising dough. This will obviously depend on your countertop material.

Step 11: Cutting too soon can make your bread become gummy in texture and not that nice airy bread you worked so hard for.

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