Cinnamon Star Bread

from Kris B.

King Arthur Flour truly messed up our schedule this year by doing away with their monthly Bakealong recipes.  We are limping along, filling in that gap, as best we can until next year when we start something new in its spot.  This month, we decided to revisit a Bakealong recipe from November of 2017.

If you’ve been with us for a while, you may remember our hilarious experience with this particular recipe.  If not, you can read about it here.  Yes, we were defeated by it last year.  Surely our baking skills have improved some in the last twelve months.  We decided to try it again.  Surely we won’t have the same issues again.  Or will we?

This dough for this recipe is super easy.  Its one quirk is that it requires potato flour or instant mashed potatoes.  Other than that, it uses only basic ingredients, making it an easy go-to recipe.  The dough is easy to work with from start to finish – it comes together easily in the mixing process, it rises consistently, and it is easy to roll, which is a good thing since it requires rolling and stacking four circles.

The shaping of the star is also easy.  Leaving a 3″ circle in the middle of your 10 inch rounds, sixteen evenly spaced cuts are made.  These are then twisted together to form the eight points of the star.  By this point in the process, I was feeling pretty good.  My star bread looked good as I placed it in the oven.

And then I took it out…

And just like last year, my points were too puffy and asymmetrical.  (That is a statement you don’t want to take out of context! :-))  Just like last year, my bread was not pretty. But also just like last year, its taste is amazing!

Tracey and I made an agreement that we would only make one attempt this year and that we would photograph and post whatever we got.  So, the pictures may not be pretty, but don’t let that discourage you from trying this recipe!  You won’t be disappointed by the taste.  The guys in our households were really happy with our multiple attempts last year because that meant that they got to eat all of our failures!

I’m not done with this Cinnamon Star Bread yet!  I will figure out how to make it so that it looks as good as is tastes!

from Tracey G.

And yep. The Cinnamon Star Bread. As Kris said we decided to give it a go again this year.

I had only one issue with my dough this time, and that’s that it was sticky. But, that would be operator error because my kitchen scale was bring weird, so I measured instead of weighed and I’m pretty sure that’s what caused my technical difficulties.

Mine too looked fairly decent in shaping department – I forgot how truly easy it was to put together and shape, I had semi-high hopes on a decent looking outcome.

You can see my point ends aren’t so lovely, but this was another place my sticky dough gave me some hassles. But usually those things even out once baked.

But in the end, my Cinnamon Star Bread looked as lumpy as last year’s attempt. But, that’s quickly forgotten once you start eating it! It’s one of the easiest yummy recipes I’ve ever made! Just, don’t judge it by it looks, lol. Just make it and eat it!