Spring and Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Spring is really here...the crocuses are poking out of the ground and brightening up the gardens.

A couple weekends ago, D and I enjoyed the warm weather and walked along the canal path...where we saw DEER!! Four of them! It was my first time seeing deer outside of the zoo. I did not grow up somewhere where deer roamed your backyard, so I think it's pretty cool.

You can see the old steel mill in behind the branches...

We are impatiently waiting for the weather to start being consistently warm...I took some gardening books out of the library and starting to think about what to plant this year, our first time having a backyard! D is excited about grilling sausages. Oh, spring.

Anyway, here's some baking from last week: a pain de mie variation, cinnamon swirl bread, from Baking Artisan Bread by Hitz. This was good stuff, and quite easy to make - the dough has milk and butter in it, and inside is just a 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon. The house smelled sooo delicious while this was baking that we basically tore into the loaf and devoured most of it in one sitting. Amazing, there was a little bit left that got added to a bread pudding...


Hope you're all having a good Monday...after a such a busy week, it's strange not having anywhere to be first thing in the morning. I did do a number of housekeeping type things, along with booking an appointment to get our taxes done and getting the car serviced. Oh, and I signed up to make historical Moravian costumes...more on that some other time. I've got a stack of bonnets to sew.