january is a slow month

I made bread for the first time ever!  I've made banana bread and zucchini bread and the like but this was my initiation into the mysteries of bread with yeast and kneading and letting it rise, etc.  Very exciting.   

It was enjoyable but my baking has been pretty limited to pies and cookies lately.  It took me a while to mix everything together and get the hang of it.  I don't think there are supposed to be pea-sized pieces of butter in bread dough.  Plus, it was so messy, what with the water, and smelly, what with the yeast.  But I think it worked and turned out quite well!  I made a recipe from Beard on Bread for cinnamon bread.  It was not a typical cinnamon bread.  Instead of rolling the cinnamon in after mixing everything together, the cinnamon was mixed in at the beginning, giving it a very light cinnamon flavor.  Less like a cinnamon!! bread - more bread that just happens to have cinnamon in it.  It is quite tasty with lots of "good, sweet butter," as James Beard recommended.  He was awfully fond of good, sweet butter on any number of the breads featured in the book.