Is there anything better than warm pillowy brioche bread covered in brown butter, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar and then layered in individual slices to create a fun pull apart bread? Naaa, I didn’t think so! This cinnamon sugar pull apart bread is the perfect treat moving into the holidays. It’s a playful twist on cinnamon rolls but in a beautiful loaf. I want all of you bread makers out there to take on a challenge and make this pull apart bread this winter! I’ve made it super easy for you with step by step picture tutorials and tips on working with bread. If you’ve made cinnamon buns before, then you can do this too!
This cinnamon sugar pull apart bread is best the day of, right from the oven! The top is crunchy while the middle is soft and pillowy, the butter and sugar melts to the bottom of the pan and creates a sugary crunch that has you going back for more! I promise you this bread will not disappoint. You can make this pull apart bread the day before and bake it fresh in the morning too. Here’s how;
Make ahead Instructions
Do the work the day before and have warm baked cinnamon sugar pull apart bread for your holiday brunch, or for your family and friends.
To make this bread the day ahead follow steps 1 to 19 in the instructions. You will basically make the entire pull apart bread until the last rise (step 19). This is where you will cover your layered/accordion style bread with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge overnight. In step 19 you allow the bread to have one last rise, you will skip this part and allow that rise to happen the next day while you preheat your oven. In the morning (or next day) allow 30 minutes for your bread to come back to room temperature. Then you’ll continue step 20 through to the end. Voila, fresh, warm cinnamon sugar bread right out of the oven!
How to Brown Butter
What makes this bread extra special is the browned butter. If you’ve never had browned butter before, you’re missing out! It’s the most delicious way to enjoy butter, if that’s even possible?! It’s also incredibly simple to do! Add your butter to a pot and let sit on low to medium heat, stir ever so often and let the butter slowly brown. You’ll start to see brown flecks on the bottom of your pot and the butter will start to smell nutty. This will take a little time (approx. 5 – 8 minutes), so be patient but keep an eye on the butter as you don’t want it to burn. Make sure to scrape up all those brown flecks into your recipe, this is the best part of the butter that makes it nutty and delicious!
Making Brioche Style Bread
Brioche bread is a rich dough made with butter and eggs. The bread will be tender, buttery and rich in flavour. This recipe is a brioche style bread, with a bit less of butter and eggs than typical. It’s a great place to start an introduction to making brioche.
If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook I recommend using it for making brioche bread. You can make it by hand but this dough is a little sticky and most people end up adding too much flour, making the bread tough. What’s nice about making it in the mixer, is you can do the entire process in the same bowl with less mess and it makes the process go faster.
When incorporating your butter add small amounts at a time and make sure the butter is well incorporated before adding more. I like to reserve approx. 1/2 cup of the flour and add the flour as necessary while incorporating the butter. This can help the butter mix easily into the dough. The dough itself is on the sticky side but it shouldn’t stick to you. When it comes to the rise of bread, kneading is very important. You’ll want to make sure you knead it for approx. 8 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when you shape it into a ball and gently press your finger in it. If the dough springs back, its ready. If the indent doesn’t change, it needs to be kneaded more.
The Rise
You’ll notice most recipes tell you to let your bread proof/rise in a draft free, warm place for approx. 1 hour or until doubled in size. This part is very important in getting the right rise for your bread. 1 hour is a guideline but it will all depend on where your bread is placed, the temperature and how active your yeast is. You may need to wait 2 hours to get the right rise. Yeast likes warmth, so keep it in a warmer place away from cold drafts, etc. What you are looking for is your dough to double in size. Start checking your dough at 45 minutes and continue checking until it’s doubled. You can also overproof the dough if you’re not careful. This is what happens if you leave your dough too long to proof and all the air bubbles have escaped or popped.
How To Make Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread -Step by Step Tutorial
Steps 1 & 5 – Make your dough, cover in plastic and let rest in warm draft free place until doubled in size. Approx. 1-2 hours.
Steps 10 & 11 – On a lightly floured work surface, flatten dough into a rectangle. Using a rolling pin, roll out dough out keeping a rectangle shape, approx. 12″ wide x 20″ tall. Then brush the entire dough with the brown butter (using approx. half of the brown butter).
Steps 12 & 13 – Using a large sharp knife cut the dough in half, lengthwise so you have approx. two 6″ x 20″ strips. Flip the sugar sides together so they are on top of each other. You should have an unsugared dough facing up. Brush that dough with browned butter and sprinkle generously with the sugar mixture.
Steps 14 & 15 – Using a sharp knife cut 6 horizontal strips. Flip each strip (both strips together) over so the bottom unsugared dough is facing up. Brush each piece with butter and sprinkle with sugar. At this point all 12 pieces of dough should be buttered and sugared on every side .
Steps 16 & 17 – Place all 12 sugared pieces into your loaf pan, accordion style. For more of a visual appeal have dough a little zig zagged instead of all lined up perfectly. Brush any remaining butter on top and sprinkle any leftover sugar mix on top. Cover with plastic and let rest for approx. 20-30 minutes until dough has had time to relax and has had its second rise.
I hope you love this cinnamon sugar pull apart bread as much as I do. Write me in the comments and let me know how your bread turned out! I love hearing from you.
PrintCinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Bread
This brioche style cinnamon sugar pull apart bread is rich, tender and buttery. It’s best enjoyed the day of, right from the oven! The top is crunchy while the middle is soft and pillowy with bursts of browned butter, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. It’s a fun twist on a cinnamon bun with a pull apart loaf style.
- Prep Time: 3 hours
- Cook Time: 35 mins
- Total Time: 3 hours 35 mins
- Yield: 8 1x
- Category: Bread
- Cuisine: French
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
- 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup warm whole milk
- 3 eggs
- 3 1/2 – 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 12 Tablespoons (168 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Coating
- 1/3 cup unsalted butter (browned butter)
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
- In the bowl of your stand mixer, add warm water, yeast and sugar. Let sit for approx. 8-10 minutes until frothy.
- In a separate small bowl whisk your eggs.
- Add warm milk, eggs, 3 1/2 cups of the flour and salt to your yeast mixture. Using the dough hook on your mixer, mix the ingredients together while adding tablespoons of butter at a time on low-medium speed. Add a little of the remaining flour as necessary while incorporating the butter. Make sure to completely mix the butter into the dough before adding more butter.
- Mix dough for approx. 6-8 minutes on medium until dough forms into a ball that is soft, smooth and elastic.
- Form dough into a ball and place into a lightly greased large bowl (using oil to grease the bowl). Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm draft free place for approx. 1 hour or until double in size.
- Meanwhile, brown your butter. In a small saucepan, add butter and let sit on low – medium heat until butter starts to brown and is fragrant. The butter will smell nutty, this will take approx. 5-8 minutes. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. You want those flecks of browned butter throughout. Let cool and set aside.
- Make your sugar coating. In a small bowl add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt together. Mix to combine and set aside.
- Grease a 9 x 6 loaf pan with butter and set aside.
- On a lightly floured work surface, flatten dough into a rectangle. Using a rolling pin, roll out dough to a large rectangle approx. 12″ wide x 20″ tall.
- Brush the entire dough with the brown butter (using approx. half of the brown butter).
- Next coat the entire dough with the cinnamon and sugar mixture, using your hands to evenly spread out right to the edges. Reserve approx. half of the sugar mixture. Don’t be shy, with the sugar though!
- Using a large sharp knife cut the dough in half, lengthwise so you have approx. two 6″ x 20″ strips.
- Flip the sugar sides together so they are on top of each other. You should have an unsugared dough facing up. Brush that dough with browned butter and sprinkle generously with the sugar mixture.
- Using a sharp knife cut 6 horizontal strips.
- Flip each strip (both strips together) over so the bottom unsugared dough is facing up. Brush each piece with butter and sprinkle with sugar. At this point all 12 pieces of dough should be buttered and sugared on every side.
- Place all 12 sugared pieces into your loaf pan, accordion style. For more of a visual appeal have dough a little zig zagged instead of all lined up perfectly.
- Brush any remaining butter on top and sprinkle any leftover sugar mix on top.
- Cover with plastic and let rest for approx. 20-30 minutes until dough has had time to relax and has had its second rise.
- Meanwhile preheat your oven to 350ËšF.
- Bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until browned. Be careful not to underbake the bread, as the bread needs time for the middle to cook (don’t worry about the top getting too browned – it gets crunchy and tastes delicious).
- Remove from oven and allow the bread to rest for 15 minutes in the pan. Gently run a knife around the edges of the pan and flip the loaf out onto a serving platter.
- Enjoy while warm!
Notes
Best consumed the day of, freshly baked from the oven. The bread will last 2 days stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
To make this bread the night before stop at step 19, and place the covered bread in the fridge overnight. In the morning take out the bread, preheat your oven and continue steps 20 through to the end.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 slice
- Calories: 264
- Sugar: 10g
- Sodium: 353mg
- Fat: 13.9g
- Saturated Fat: 8.4g
- Unsaturated Fat: 0
- Trans Fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 31.1g
- Fiber: 1g
- Protein: 4.4g
- Cholesterol: 65mg
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Leave a Rating and Comment!
I love hearing from you! Leave a comment with any questions or how your recipe turned out (your email address will not be published)!
This was so easy and so yummy! I never bake and saw it on Instagram and knew my partner would love it…it looked easy enough but I was feeling intimidated as I’ve never used yeast…BUT the directions were clear and easy to follow(the pictures helped and the extra info for things I’d never done like browning butter and rising my dough) and I impressed myself! So tasty and I’m making it again this weekend for our tea/coffee treat in the mornings! Next I’m trying cinnamon buns and the little caramel candies!!
Aniela, this makes me so happy to hear. Thank you for your feedback and I’m glad the pictures were helpful! Happy Baking 🙂
I received a stand mixer for Christmas complete with the dough hook. So I’ve challenged myself at making something with it. Your recipe seemed like a good starting point. I’ve made a double batch. But because I got lazy I cooked them at the same time. First one came out perfectly and was devoured by my coworker pretty fast later in the day. The second one for myself and family, I left it to cool before heading to work. Turned out to be under cooked because my loaf pan where different size. Oups! I am doing it again today so that my family can enjoy it as was.
Really good recipe, better than anything store bought and not overly sweet. The brown butter was new to me but tasted amazing. Also I really love the feature on the site that give you the right quantity of each ingredients for the number of batch you want to make. I will be coming here in the future for more delicious new recipes to try out.
Mitril thank you for the lovely review and I love that you challenged yourself with this recipe (and making a double batch at that). Brown butter is my absolute favorite and it gives so much richness and nutty flavour! I’m so happy to hear you’re enjoying the recipe format too, it’s great to get feedback so thank you! Happy baking :).