Sometimes it's good to indulge :)

This my friends is a beautiful thing.  What do I do when I am to achy to build chicken coops, rollerskate or garden... well I create magnificently tasty loaves of bread.  For a while now I have been thinking "wouldn't it be tasty to combine challah bread and cinnamon swirl bread"  The answer is yes!  

I made the basic dough for a Challah.  The recipe I use creates a lot of dough.  I usually will split the dough in half and create two loaves.  So I took half the dough and split that into three equal pieces.  This is the point in the bread making process where you would normally just stretch the dough out into ropes and then braid the ropes.  What I did for the cinnamon loaf was to take each piece and sort of pat it out into a rectangle.  Then with a rolling pin I rolled the dough out into a long rectangle.  I should have taken a picture, but I was too wrapped up in the process.  I would estimate that the dimensions were something like 4x11 inches.  Then I spread melted butter on the dough leaving a little bit of a non-buttered edge around the entire perimeter.  I then took some cinnamon and sugar I had mixed up and sprinkled this on the butter.  I rubbed it together with the back of a spoon so that the sugar and butter were more of a paste.  Then I rolled the dough on it's long side creating a rope.  Inside was a spiral of cinnamon sugar.  I did this with all three piece of dough.  When I had three equal ropes I then braided the ropes together as I would have for a regular challah.  Placing the loaf onto a parchment lined baking sheet I painted the surface of the loaf with an egg wash.  Into the oven.  The finished product was awesome on it's own, warm, doughy, gooey, sweet like a giant cinnamon bun, but I thought what could make this even better?

Making it into french toast!  After the bread had cooled I sliced a couple of thick pieces from the loaf.  I whipped up a little egg, cream, and a touch of vanilla.  Soaking the slices in the mixture and then frying them up.  The only thing that could have possibly made this any better in my mind would have been to add perhaps some fresh berries or maybe a fresh whipped goat cream cheese.  Something tart and fresh to balance the sweet.  It wasn't too sweet on it's own, it actually has a perfect sweetness, saltiness, and bitterness of the caramelized sugar, but I just think maybe a balance could enhance the flavors.

I will definitely be making this again.  Hopefully next time I can share it wish friends.  Not that the three animals sitting far to close and trying to sneak tastes while I wasn't looking were not good company, but this seems like the kind of meal that should be enjoyed with friends.

This is the other half of the dough.  A regular Challah.  Very tasty, but not quite as exotic.