Cinnamon and Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Growing up, my mom was the kind of person that would make us breakfast almost every morning.

We would either wake up to pancakes, waffles, muffins, coffeecake, fried dough, cinnamon rolls....you get the idea. 

Oh, and she homeschooled us. All 9 of us.

I remember I always HATED the fact she would make us breakfast. I thought it was so 'dorky' and 'homeschooler-ish'. Me and my brothers were always jealous of our friends who got to have cereal for breakfast! Instead, for us, cereal was a thing that we got on our birthday....we were allowed to choose whatever kind we wanted. And we also got to have REAL milk in our cereal on this special occasion! not soymilk!

Whenever I slept over my friends houses, I would always be SO excited to have cereal in the morning... Not that fresh out of the oven, hot, homemade stuff! My friends didn't get it. They would have killed for their moms to get up early and make them fried dough and I couldn't understand why. Wierdos.

I always swore to myself I would NOT be 'that' mom that baked and cooked for her kids all the time, and  I most definitely would NOT homeschool them!

haha.

How things have changed.

Now my kids will be the ones excited to go to their friends houses for preservative filled, artificial, year old cereal.

Sorry, future kids, for all the delicious, fresh baked goods I will make you.

Up until recently though, the thought of baking bread, or anything yeast-y freaked. me. out. 

But it's really soooo easy, especially if you have instant yeast. Go buy some.

And this bread is just to-die-for.... a mix between cinnamon swirl bread, monkey bread, and cinnamon rolls. You just cant go wrong!

                                                                            then finally

So now that you have a play by play how to make this yummyness, you have no excuse!

Cinnamon and Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

For the dough:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour, plus more as needed

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter

1/3 cup milk

1/4 cup water

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 1/4 tsp. instant yeast

For the Filling:

1 cup sugar
2 tsp.cinnamon

2 tsp. butter

dash of nutmeg

For the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp.milk- or enough to make it silky and drizzly

1 tsp. vanilla

-In a microwave safe bowl, melt butter in the milk and water until very warm...not hot.

-Dissolve sugar and salt in butter mixture.

-In a large mixing bowl, with mixer on low speed, combine butter mixture with flour. Quickly add eggs and vanilla and yeast.

-Continue mixing on low speed until a cohesive dough forms, adding flour as needed so the dough doesn't stick to the side of the bowl. You've added enough flour when dough is tacky, not sticky.

-Beat on highest setting for 5 minutes. This is VERY important to develop the gluten and get fluffy delicious results.

-Spray a medium size bowl with cooking spray and transfer dough. 

-Let rise for an hour or until dough is doubled in size.

-Flour a large surface, dump dough onto floured surface and roll out into about a 12x20 in. rectangle.

-Pour melted butter and spread, covering all of dough.

-Pour ALL of the cinnamon/sugar/nutmeg mixture over that/.

-Slice dough vertically onto 6 even strips.

-Stack srtrips on top of eachother and cut again into 6 even sections. 

-Stack squares and put in a greased loaf pan.

-Bake 30-35 minutes in an oven preheated at 350.

-Remove from oven and let rest for 20 minutes.

-During this time, drizzle half the glaze on hot bread.

-Run a knife around edges of the bread to loosen and VERY carefully turn loaf out onto a serving plate.

-Drizzle rest of the glaze over loaf.

                                                                    Enjoy! Trust me...you will :)