Make Breakfast Shine with Abundant Raisin Bread

There are few things that annoy me more than slicing into a loaf of raisin bread only to discover that each slice contains a paltry raisin or two embedded in the bread as if they somehow fell into the mixer by accident. Whether its Blueberry Pancakes or Clam Chowder, I find that too many foods these days suffer from a pitiful lack of their namesake ingredients.

Not so with my RAISIN bread. I add a full cup of raisins per loaf, which are first simmered in red wine and spices to plump them up. Then I roll them into the dough, which avoids the problem of clumping, ensuring you have plenty of raisins in each bite.

One of the best parts about this bread is that your home will be filled with wonderful aromas. Not just with the smells of the cinnamon and baking bread when its in the oven, but with fragrance of nutty yeast as the bread rises along with the scent of sweet mulled wine as the raisins simmer.

If you want, you can use a 50/50 mixture of whole wheat flour and bread flour to make this bread. When using whole wheat flour you need the extra gluten contained in bread flour to make up for the bran in whole wheat that disrupts the formation of gluten bonds.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Follow Marc's visual breakdown for rolling the dough from his recipe below to make your own raisin bread.