Cinnamon raisin bread

Cinnamon raisin bread ice cream?

Nope! I'm branching out and reviewing recipes that aren't ice cream. It turns out you can't make tons of ice cream without you and your family gaining weight, so I'm taking a little break from weekly ice cream making. Bread is perhaps not a weight loss food, but it can't be as bad as ice cream.

Also, my parents gave me their old bread machine. I love bread but haven't been able to eat much of it since I started a low-sodium diet (which helps with an inner ear problem). Salt-free bread tastes bad to me, and it's hard—not impossible, but hard—to find regular bread that isn't high in sodium.

My bread adventures (let's call them breadventures) will start out featuring a Zojirushi BBCC-S15 bread maker and recipes from The No-Salt, Lowest-Sodium Baking Book by Donald Gazzaniga.

An oldie but a goodie

The book is a godsend but has a couple of problems. First, its recipes are for a 2-pound loaf, and my bread machine only makes up to 1.5-pound loaves. (I didn't realize this and ended up with bread baked onto the viewing window.) Second, I couldn't find any recipes that I could set up to cook overnight, given the basic ingredients I have. Many of the recipes require adding fruits or nuts partway through, or they use the bread machine only for kneading, not for baking.

Despite these problems, the cinnamon raisin bread was a success! The loaf had a great texture and crust—even though it languished in the machine for a few hours after baking—and it was tasty. When fresh it was good even untoasted. It was also great as a base for cinnamon toast, and should be perfect for bread pudding.

I'll make it again but try halving the recipe. I also might try using proportionately more raisins and perhaps cinnamon.

I'm not sure how much yeast to use when halving the recipe. The author says that salt inhibits yeast action (so I can't rely on regular bread recipes) and that smaller loaves rise more effectively, but then he gives an example of halving where the yeast is 2/3 of the full amount. Also, I found a site that says that cinnamon can inhibit yeast action, so if I add more cinnamon, I might have to use more yeast. Whatever. I think I'll just halve the cinnamon and yeast, and then adjust the recipe next time (if necessary).

This was not a low gluten recipe, by the way. It called for bread flour (high in protein/gluten) and additional "vital wheat gluten", which was probably what made the crust and texture so great. Obviously I don't mind eating dairy and sugar and gluten. Cutting out sodium is more than enough deprivation for me, thank you very much.

Stay tuned for more breadventures...