walnut and cinnamon bread.

All is peaceful and content. Your mind's at ease, taking a hiatus from the hustle and bustle of the week gone by. You step into your kitchen and the irresistible aroma of freshly baked goods hugs your nose, its presence welcoming and delightful. Is this not a way you'd like to spend your weekends? A cup of tea with buttered toasted slices of a walnut and cinnamon loaf is definitely a way I'd like to spend my Saturday mornings and now so can you.

It was whilst my mum and I were in London's Westfield shopping center that I first encountered this. After we kept walking past a stall selling a large variety of freshly made breads, we realised we couldn't leave without buying something and it just so happened to be the walnut, apricot (I think it was) and cinnamon one that was just yelling to be brought. A few weeks later and I decided to have a go making it myself, minus the dried fruit because I forgot to add it. Even though bread is so time consuming to make, there is always something extra satisfying about knowing you've made it yourself and because of that it always tastes nicer.

For this you will need...

• 1/4 pint of milk
• 6 tablespoons of butter
• 7g (1 sachet) easy bake yeast
• 2 eggs
• 40g sugar
• 320g strong wholemeal bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• walnuts
• 40g sugar
• 2 tablespoons of cinnamon 
• a few tablespoons of butter

What to do...

• Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk and then leave to cool slightly.
• Pour the yeast on top and then stir around before leaving it for 10 minutes
• Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl and then mix in the eggs and sugar
• Pour the mixture from the saucepan into the bowl and form it all into a ball shape
• Take out onto a floured surface and kneed for about 10 minutes
• Pour a little oil into a bowl then place your dough ball into said bowl and cover with a tea towel.
• leave for at least 2 hours.
• Once it has risen, take out of the bowl and place onto a work surface. I then added the walnuts here, kneeding them into the bread. 
• Then roll out the dough into a rectangle shape
• For your cinnamon filling, simply stir together sugar and cinnamon. You will need more than the amount given but I didn't measure it so just go with the flow ;-)
• Melt some butter in a saucepan and then spread over the dough. The sugar and cinnamon then goes on top.
• Roll the dough up tight, folding in the ends, and then (if you like) you can press some more pieces of walnut into it. In the picture below you can see that I tried to add dried fruit. Please ignore that because they only fell out when I took it out of the oven.
• And then, yep you guessed it, pop in the oven at 170 degrees for 40 minutes and your bread is COMPLETE.

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