Recipe: Banana bread Cinamon Rolls

There are few times in my life when I have trouble sleeping.  Today is one of those days where I can just tell that I'm going to be resistant.  Not really to the act of sleep itself, but more so to the things required for sleep to take place. Which makes me really go bananas because I can tell that I'm tired and do want to sleep.  It seemed thusly appropriate that instead, I try my hand at baking bread.  A Cinnamon Roll Bananna Bread to be precise. 


Click here to be transported to the original glorious instructions.

The miracle about this bread attempt is that I forced myself to basically stick to the directions.  A bad habit that has formed over my life time is to change things up in ways that I think are small changes, but in the end have being time effects on the food. This time I did not make that mistake.  Therefore, I'm hoping that this bread turns out nice enough to bring with me to class tomorrow.  Or if I like it enough, to keep for myself and make another batch with the bananas that now sit on my counter for the slightly longer Monday class time.

I did not take pictures as I was going.  I will take pictures of the final project, no matter what it looks like. I hope it looks good.  As it is a yeast based bread, I now think I should have given it an egg wash to make the top all shiny at the final moment, but it wasn't in the directions.. so perhaps next time.

There are 12 more minutes on the clock.

My one challenge was that the break didn't rise properly.  My place is not warm enough to support the needs of waiting yeast.  Instead of doubleing in size because it was sitting in a warm spot in my house I kept placing it on top of my toaster oven and turning the appliance on and off so as to carefully assist with the rising and not bake the bottom part of the bread.  And I worry that because I had to do all the kneading on the cold counter top, perhaps it messed with the chemical reactions that were going on.

I also do not own a Kitchen aide type of mixer so everything was hand mixed.  I'm never sure if I'm over doing the mixing or under doing it.  The dough did look awfully soggy to me, before I started kneading it the first time.  After I finally got it to rise it looked more how I'm used to so that was encouraging.  Now I wait for the ding of the oven timer.  And keep clicking the oven light on and off to see what's going on.

It does smell really good!!

 And there they are, cooling!  They look and smell great.  I can only hope that they're going to taste good as well.  I'm trying to continue to follow directions, "Cool Completly." But I'm not sure that I have the will power.  I want to cut into one of them right now!!  Eating warm bread fresh out of the oven is one of those great little joys in life.  I can't really see it hurting the bread to be cut into before it's cool and needs to be warmed again.  Plus, how do you get the butter to melt without something warming it up above room temp?

Recipe below the Cut!!
In case you didn't check out the link!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• 3 teaspoons yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup Greek-style yogurt
• 1/2 cup mashed overripe bananas (about 2 bananas)
• 2 3/4 cups (12 3/8 ounces) bread flour
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Procedures

1. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the water, yeast, and a pinch of the sugar and set it a aside a few minutes to get frothy.
2. Add the remaining sugar, yogurt, bananas, bread flour, salt, and vanilla. Knead with the dough hook until the cleans the sides of the bowl and start to get elastic.
3. Add the olive oil and continue kneading until the mixture is smooth, silky, and elastic.
4. Form the dough into a ball and put back into the bowl. Drizzle it with a little oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until doubled in size, about an hour.
5. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Spray a 9 x 15 loaf pan with a little baking spray, if you want the extra insurance that it will come out.
6. Flour your work surface and knead the dough a bit, then roll it out into a rectangle about 9 x 15 inches.
7. Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon and spread it evenly over the rectangle, leaving about 3 inches un-sugared at the far end. Roll the dough up, jellyroll-style, so you've got a 9-inch long log. Pinch to seal the ends and the seam.
8. Place the dough seam-side down in the pan. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.
9. Bake at 325 degrees for 35-40 minutes, until dark golden brown.
10. Remove the loaf from the pan and let it cool completely on a rack before cutting.