Sourdough Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This is a perfectly soft white loaf with a classic cinnamon sugar swirl throughout. Your swirl can absolutely be better than mine with a tighter roll, by the way!

What You’ll Need

If you want to double the recipe or measure in grams, go down to the recipe card and it will do the math for you (hit the “metric” button).

Bread dough

• ¾ cup active fed sourdough starter (5.8 ounces / 165 grams)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour (14.75 ounces / 415 grams)
• 2 tablespoons honey (1.5 ounces / 22 grams)
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• ½ cup whole milk
• 1 egg

Cinnamon sugar filling

• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Equipment You’ll Need

Standard-sized loaf pan

Instructions

Combine the ingredients

Take all the ingredients for the bread dough, except the salt, and mix them together in a large mixing bowl. Be careful, you need some of the sugar in here but most of it is for the filling.

The purpose of leaving out the salt is to let the dough have a brief rest without it. This is called the autolyze stage. It helps hydrate your dough and sometimes leads to a better rise but if you dump the salt in accidentally and just mix it all together, everything will turn out fine. It’s not that big a deal.

Cover the dough and just let it rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Knead the dough

Add the salt to the dough and then knead it in. Kneading by hand works perfectly here. You can absolutely do this in your bread machine or stand mixer, but this dough doesn’t need a really long kneading period the way that yeast bread does.

A few minutes of kneading, just working that salt in until the dough feels smooth and you can’t feel the grittiness of the salt, is all it takes.

As you knead, the butter will work its way through the dough, and it will become softer and smoother. If it’s still really dry or too wet to handle, just adjust. Add a little bit of water or a little bit of flour until the texture is right.

First rise

The first fry takes about three to four hours in a warm place, such as a slightly warm turned-off oven or right on your kitchen counter if your kitchen is warm.

If you prefer you can pop this in the fridge tightly covered with plastic wrap and let it rise overnight.. Don’t be surprised if in the morning it hasn’t risen much. If it looks the same and you need it to rise more, just pop it on the counter and let it rise a bit at room temperature before you move on.

Mix the filling

Mix the cinnamon sugar filling in a small bowl and set it aside.

Shape the dough

Now time to shape this into a loaf. If you’ve ever made a basic loaf of bread, it’s the exact same process except that you sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top before you roll. If you’ve never made a loaf of bread before, you’re about to learn how it’s done. It’s rolled up into a log!

Pop the dough out onto the counter and use your loaf pan as a guide. Stretch the dough into a rectangle where the short side of the dough is as long as the long side of the loaf pan. Are you with me?

Add the filling

Now sprinkle your cinnamon sugar in the middle of the dough and spread it out. Not to the very edge. Leave about a one-inch border all the way around.

Now we’re going to start rolling. Remember this saying for the rest of your life because it’s how every sandwich loaf is formed. Shoulders in, head down. That means we’re tucking in those top corners, and then we start to roll down.

Roll the dough

Head tucks down, and you just keep on going rolling your way down. The tighter you roll, the more of a swirl you’ll have.

I don’t roll very tightly, and that’s why my loaf is less beautiful.

Seal the edges

Next, pinch all the seams shut: the long one across the top and then the ones on the side.

Even if you’re a bit lazy (like me) about this step with a regular loaf, you’ll want to really pay extra attention here to keep that filling inside

Let it rise

We’re almost done. Time to let the dough rise again. Generously spray your baking pan with non-stick spray. Air on the side of too much if you’re unsure. You really don’t want this to stick.

Cover the loaf with greased parchment paper. Again, be generous and let it rise in a warm place, like a warm but turned-off oven, for an hour or two. You want the loaf to be about an inch above the pan. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 350. (Make sure you remove the rising loaf first!)

Bake the bread

For a pretty shine, you can brush the top with an egg wash, but you don’t have to!

Remove the plastic wrap and bake in the preheated oven until your loaf is done. This will take about 40 minutes. Check with a thermometer if you have one. The interior should be about 200°.

Cool and serve

Once the loaf is done, remove it from the pan carefully. Use a butter knife along the edges if there are any sticky parts. Let it cool on a cooling rack completely before you slice it. Slice it hot, and it will be a little bit gummy, and the filling won’t be set.

Storage Instructions

This loaf will stay fresh at room temperature for a couple of days, a day or so longer for toasting. But my favorite way to store it is to slice, put in an old bread bag from the store, and toast directly from frozen.

Questions and Troubleshooting

More cinnamon sourdough recipes

I have a truly STRANGE number of sourdough cinnamon recipes! It is one of my favorite combos and you never have to buy any special ingredients.

• Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Sourdough Bread
• Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread (Round Loaf)
• Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
• Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
• Sourdough Cinnamon Sugar Quick Bread