Easy Cinnamon Swirl Bread

I've decided that with all my newly found spare time, much more time will be devoted to cooking and baking interesting things, branching out from the standby meals I've been repeating with so much regularity over the past few months. This is a really easy way to make a nice breakfast treat out of regular bread, in only a few extra minutes of labor. It's a modified version of the cinnamon bread my dad makes:

Use any standard bread recipe to make this cinnamon loaf. As I've noted multiple times, I use Rhonda's bread recipe (Beginner's Loaf). I've had it memorized for at least a couple years now. Since I've been living alone, I double it and make two loaves every other weekend, and put one in the freezer for the second week.

After letting the dough rise the first time, punch it down, and instead of forming it into a standard loaf, use a rolling pin to roll it out into a rectangle (I used my double batch to make one regular loaf and one cinnamon loaf). Depending on the consistency of dough, getting it to flatten out will take a little bit of work.

Once the dough is rolled out, smear it with a thin layer of butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. It's up to you how much to use- it doesn't take much to make it taste good! It depends on how decadent you want it be. Cardamom is delicious here too. You can also sprinkle it with raisins, nuts, or other dried fruit.

Once you have the toppings on, roll it up so that the cinnamon & sugar make a spiral, and this will form the loaf.

Let rise in the pan and bake as you would with a regular loaf. Easy peasy!

This is such a nice treat for breakfast, and also makes excellent French toast!