
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.

CINNAMON RAISIN DUTCH OVEN BREAD
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
- In a large bowl, combine first 6 ingredients.
- In a small bowl, add yeast to warm water (~105°-110°F) and let sit for 5 minutes.
- Add yeast-water to the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or hand until combined.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Remove dough from bowl with floured hands and place on a floured counter top.
- 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.
- 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.
- Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for 10 more minutes.
- Let cool before cutting.
After 12 hour rest period Folding over in step 5
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.