Cinnamon Raisin Bread
This Cinnamon Raisin Bread is one of the simplest breads you can make at home from scratch, and and it’s loaded with wonderful cinnamon flavor and juicy raisins!
Homemade bread takes a bit of work and time, but to me it’s always worth it.
I’d rather make my own instead of buying one of those 3-week shelf stable loaves that have 50 ingredients in them instead of 5.
What I do to make things easier is have a “bread baking day” from time to time where I’ll bake several different loaves at once, then store them in the freezer. It lasts me quite a while.
To those who read my Apple Pie Panini post, this is my recipe for Homemade Cinnamon Swirl Raisin Bread that I used for the sandwich.
This cinnamon raisin bread is adapted from my plain sandwich bread post, and if you’re not a fan of raisins, just feel free to leave them out.
How to Make Cinnamon Raisin Bread:
Start by stirring together milk, butter, yeast, and a little honey, and let it sit for 10 minutes until foamy:
Add flour, eggs, salt, and raisins to the liquid and knead it in the bowl of a stand mixer for 10 minutes:
Let this soft, sticky dough double in size, which should take an hour or two (and if your kitchen is as cold as mine is right now, it will take two)!
It should look all stretchy and strand-like, like this:
Remove the dough and stretch it out into a rectangle on a lightly floured board:
Make the cinnamon filling by mixing together melted butter, brown sugar, and tons of cinnamon:
Spread the cinnamon filling all over the rectangle, and roll the rectangle up:
Pinch the seam shut at the end, and place the bread roll in a loaf pan:
Cover it with plastic wrap and let the roll rise for about an hour:
Into the oven it goes until it comes out golden brown:
Now you can slice it up and eat it toasted with butter, or make this glorious Apple Pie Panini with it.
Pumpkin Muffins are another one of my favorite recipes to bake. Enjoy!
How long does Cinnamon Raisin Bread last? A few days at room temperature, about 10 days in the fridge, or 2 months in the freezer.
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 1 cup milk
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter melted
- 3 tbsp honey
- 2.25 tsp instant yeast
- 17.5 ounces by weight all-purpose flour (3.5 cups, measured)*
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup raisins
- butter for greasing the pan
For the cinnamon filling:
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter melted
- 1/8 tsp salt
Instructions
- Combine the milk, melted butter, and honey in a microwave safe glass.
- Heat the liquid in the microwave** to 110 to 115 degrees F, then stir in the yeast. Let this mixture sit for 10 minutes, until foamy.
- Pour the yeast liquid into the bowl of a stand mixer, and add the flour, salt, eggs, and raisins.
- Stir it around with a wooden spoon or the dough hook of the mixer until roughly combined.
- Fit the stand mixer with the dough hook, and knead for 10 minutes on medium low speed.
- Cover the dough bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for one to two hours, until doubled in size.
- Lightly flour your countertop and spread the dough into a rectangle that is the length of your loaf pan (about 9 inches). It doesn't have to be perfect.
- Make the cinnamon filling by stirring together the brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and salt.
- Spread this mixture all over the top of the dough rectangle, then roll the dough up like a cinnamon roll, and pinch the seam shut.
- Grease a loaf pan with butter, and place the bread roll seam side down into the pan.
- Cover the loaf with plastic wrap and let it rise for 60 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and place a sheet pan on the lowest shelf of the oven. Add enough boiling water to cover the bottom of the sheet pan, then bake the bread on the shelf above the water for 40-50 minutes until the inside registers 190 to 200 degrees on an instant read thermometer.
- Let the bread cool completely on a wire rack before slicing it. Enjoy!
- Storing: since there are no preservatives, the bread will only keep for a few days at room temperature. I recommend freezing any unused bread.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
Post updated in September 2018. Originally published November 2013.
100 Comments on “Cinnamon Raisin Bread”
I made this bread, and the only change I made was to add 1\4 molasses as I like the richness it gives to the bread. Everyone loved it…by far the best recipe I have tried so far.
Glory,
When did you add the molasses ? Did the bread rise OK ?
Thanks
Made the recipe to a T and not worth the effort, time and cost for this ridiculous loaf of bread. Trust me, I’ve been making bread for over 27 years, this loaf is unfortunately going in the garbage.
The recipe is way too heavy to rise.
I too have baking bread for decades and found this recipe to work very well. Compared to many artisan / sourdough type breads, this loaf is light and rises very well, with great oven spring. In fact, if not proofed properly, it can have so much oven spring that it causes blowouts.
If your bread didn’t rise, it is either due to dead yeast, wrong type of flour, or inadequate / incorrect kneading technique (poor gluten development). In my nearly 50-years baking bread of all types, I have never encountered a bread that was too heavy to rise!
How long would I knead by hand?
I kneed it for about 5 minutes by hand, has come out great every time. I’ve made it 6 times so far.
5 stars!
This was my first time making raisin bread, and I followed the recipe to a T. It came out PERFECT! I also brushed the finished loaf tops with butter. It looks exactly like store bought and tastes even better! I managed to get TWO loaves out of the dough, which is good because we LOVE raisin bread 🙂 No more paying $4 for a dinky little loaf at the store!
Thanks for this recipe! It’s perfect as is 🙂
Thank you Lorie, glad you enjoy this bread so much!
Messed this up but managed to save it! I’m no expert cook, but here’s what happened and what i did-
Mixed up my teaspoon and tablespoon measurements in the beginning, so i ended up with 2.25 tablespoons of yeast! Which obviously is very bad! I doubled all other ingredients, adding the doubled up milk and etc into the already bubbling yeast mixture, and let it continue to do whatever in the ten minute timer that was going. Besides doubling EVERYTHING, i also shortened the second rise time in half, and let myself be a bit rough with the dough (didn’t punch it down or anything, i just didnt try to preserve bubbles at any point).
Came out still gorgeous, if in a doubled amount! You can taste the yeast flavor, but not overwhelmingly so, and frankly i prefer my homemade bread a bit yeasty. If anyone makes this mistake, it seems like whatever i did was at the very least functioning, if not a perfect solution. I hope you can do better with this information!
I made this bread and messed it up by FORGETTING TO PUT IN THE EGGS AND RAISINS !!
I put it in the oven to raise at 180 and 45 min later I Realized what I Forgot 😏
I took it out put it back in my mixer and added the missing ingredient. I then used my dough hook
to mix it together 😟 I WAS SURE IT WASA LOST CAUSE !!
I still put put it back in the oven to complete the raising 😜
It came out Huge !!!
I finished it and it was DELICIOUS and looked Great😀
I made this recipe today and it’s the best bread I’ve ever made!
Do you think that I could knead this without a stand mixer but by hand? How long would you recommend mixing for?
Why do you bake with a water tray? Doesn’t that make it crusty? Can I bake without?
It does make the crust much more crisp if you use the water underneath the loaf. It turns out great!!#
I could not get the dough to form like the picture without extra flour.
Hi, the raisin loaf looked good when i took it out of the oven. It even tasted great. The only thing is that there was a big air pocket at the top part right above the cinnamon sugar layer. The bottom layer did separate as much. What did it do wrong?
I’ve been making this bread for a few months now and it turns out perfect every time. I get 2 loaves and a good thing too. We have a raisin bread monster here. One other thing I make the dough in my trusty old Zo bread baker and I knead the raisins in when it’s finished rising.
This bread is fantastic. Thank you for the recipe.
I made this bread but 17.5 oz which calculates to 495 g are not 3.5 cups of flour… more like 4 cups.. anyway I added 3.5 cups of flour and the dough was super sticky! I’m a beginner bread baker so I worked with it but needless to say it was not rolled but somehow I put it in pan and oven.. 20 min later the top is burning so I put an aluminum foil on top, didn’t tuck it, just draped it on top…… I do have a pan with water right under it.
Thinking now I should have added that additional flour! Maybe next time. The bread is very nice and light, the swirl is all over the place but taste is perfect!
This recipe is the bomb! I followed it almost to the tee, although I doubled the raisins, brown sugar and butter batter. The dough was really easy to work with and rose beautifully. I brushed it with butter after it was baked and it looked (&tasted) wonderful!this is a keeper! Thank you