Raisin-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread

What do you do when you are baking, cinnamon raisin bread, and you don’t have any raisins? Punt? No. You use a mix of chopped, dried apricots, and dried cranberries. And it came out really nicely.

This is my second attempt at Peter Reinhart’s Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and it’s a keeper. I made a couple of modifications to my first batch, including adding more cinnamon to the dough, and more importantly, adding more cinnamon and sugar before I rolled the dough up into a loaf for the final proofing. It was a little gooier and a little sweeter — but hey, this is a 100% whole wheat bread replacing cinnamon rolls, so I think we deserve a little bit of sweet. haha. Also, the pre-ferment was 400 grams of water, 350 grams of whole wheat flour, 10 grams of salt and 2-3 grams of yeast. The recipe calls for milk rather than water, and I will use milk next time for a softer dough, but I was sharing the pre-ferment with a loaf of whole wheat toasting bread. So I compromised.

Next time, I am going to use more fruit, and maybe start adding walnuts or pecans.

If you look closely at the bottom of the loaf, you can see the melted sugar and cinnamon oozing out. Nice.