CInnamon Pull-Apart Bread

         Happy April everyone! I am happy to say that I have been keeping up with my once a month updating of this blog.  The most recent of of my baking escapades was cinnamon pull-apart bread for easter morning.  Instead of using Gertrude for this endeavor, I used my parent's new giant convection oven; Lets call him Dusty (he gathered quite a bit of dust waiting to be installed).  Think of Dusty as the buff, stud-muffin of a grandson of cranky old Gertrude- MUCH easier to deal with and MUCH more effective at it's one job.  I also was able to use the holy grail of baking- the kitchen-aid standing mixer.  When the very far in the future day comes when I have a dispensable income, you can bet that the kitchen-aid will be the first thing on my list.  

         Anyways, considering this was for easter bunch (and I had basically my dream kitchen to work with), there was no way I was going to mess this up.   Learning from past experience of never trusting old yeast, I made sure to throw a new package of yeast into the basket at the grocery store to ensure that those little guys were just as sharp and ready to perform as was Dusty.  This was definitely a good choice. Nothing is better than that moment when you see that your bread dough has indeed doubled like the recipe said- no need to be a wishful thinker "oh, yeah.... that kinda looks like it has grown a little bit, right??".  

        One of the kitchen designs that has always baffled me is the placement of a microwave right above the oven.  Considering that most microwave handles are stainless steel, it makes absolutely no sense to have a large source of heat coming from right below.  Use of the microwave and the oven/stove are definitely not mutually exclusive so it is most definitely possible to get some very painful microwave opening experiences.  So where am I going with this?  Basically, while the hot microwave handle is quite literally a big pain in the...... hand..... inside the microwave is the PERFECT place to let bread rise (just don't turn on the microwave obviously).  Perfectly nice and warm, without feeling bad for wasting energy in any way by turning the oven light on or something.  This plus my brand new yeast created bread that rose like no other.   Anyways, I used the following recipe for the pull-apart bread http://joythebaker.com/2011/03/cinnamon-sugar-pull-apart-bread/ and the following recipe for cream cheese frosting http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cream-cheese-frosting-recipe.html since you really can't have cinnamon bread without cream cheese frosting.  I sadly don't have any kitchen debacles to recant since the preparation went absolutely perfectly.  NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM