Fluffy yeast dough, layered with butter, cinnamon and sugar, is baked in a bread loaf pan for the most delicious cinnamon sugar pull apart bread. The top edges of the bread are crunchy and crisp, with so many soft and fluffy pull apart layers that you’ll love to eat warm from the oven.
You might also love these high altitude tested bread recipes for cinnamon swirl loaf bread, cinnamon babka, and the best homemade cinnamon rolls.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Soft for Days. The brioche dough is enriched with eggs, whole milk and butter, as well as a tangzhong starter, all of which keeps it tender, soft and fluffy for days after baking. You’ll find that this dough is very similar to the enriched dough that I use for my challah and Easter bread recipes.
So Fun to Eat. Your family will love, quite literally, tearing into this bread when it’s warm from the oven. It’s such a fun recipe to make and eat, and everyone loves pulling apart the soft, flaky layers of bread. My kids thought the layers looked like giant pieces of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.
Everything Made from Scratch. When you think of pull apart cinnamon sugar bread, you might think of monkey bread, which is usually made from canned dough of some kind that’s shaped into balls, rolled in cinnamon sugar, and baked in a bundt pan. My recipe for cinnamon sugar pull apart bread is far more special, with homemade dough and a little more constraint with its use of sugar, so it’s not overwhelmingly sweet.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
- Tangzhong. The tangzhong starter is a simple mixture of water, milk and flour. Added to the dough, it keeps the bread soft and pillowy, and helps it rise higher, fluffier, and faster. The tangzhong also keeps the bread soft for days after baking, rather than quickly going stale as some homemade yeast breads tend to do.
- Yeast. The yeast is the leavening agent which makes the bread rise. You can use either active dry yeast or rapid rise/instant yeast. I absolutely love this Red Star Platinum Premium Yeast with dough enhancers. It truly makes exceptional yeast bread.
- Bread Flour. Bread flour has a higher percentage of protein than all-purpose flour, giving yeast breads a chewier texture. I like to use High Altitude Hungarian Flour, which is a high protein bread flour. You can find it on the baking aisle at King Soopers throughout Colorado and a few other mid-western states.
Instructions
Tangzhong
- In a small saucepan, whisk together the water, milk and flour. Cook over medium heat for several minutes, whisking constantly, until it thickens into a paste.
- Remove from the heat and set aside until needed.
Dough
- Warm the milk to between 110-115F. Stir in the yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar, then let it sit for about 5 minutes, until bubbly.
- In the bowl for your stand mixer, combine the flour with the rest of the sugar, salt, and cardamom. Add the tangzhong, the milk/yeast mixture, the soft butter, eggs, and vanilla extract, then stir into a rough, shaggy dough.
- With the dough hook, knead the dough for 10 minutes on medium low speed. The dough should be soft, smooth and stretchy, pulling away from the sides of the bowl but still sticking a little at the bottom. If kneading the dough by hand on your counter, knead the dough for 15 minutes. If the dough seems too loose, add more flour, a tablespoon at a time. If it seems too stiff, add some warm water, a teaspoon at a time. After kneading, you should be able to easily gather the dough into a ball with your hands. Note: This is a dough that you do not want to be too soft or loose. If you cannot gather it into a ball in your hands, knead in a little more flour.
- Gather the dough into a ball and place it into a greased bowl that’s at least twice as big as the dough. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to rise until the dough is doubled in size. Depending on the freshness and quality of your yeast, as well as the warmth of the ingredients and environment, this may take 1-2 hours. For me, it took 1 hour with the bowl sitting inside my oven on the “bread proof” setting.
Filling and Shaping
- Butter a 9x4x4 pullman pan (although if your pan isn’t non-stick, you should use non-stick baking spray, or line the pan with parchment paper). The high sides of the pullman pan will make a tall loaf of bread, and help to keep the dough from overflowing the ends of the pan as it bakes (as you see happened with my shorter bread loaf pan in the video).
- Generously flour a clean counter top, and turn the dough out onto the counter. Gently deflate the dough by pressing on it with your hands, flour the top of the dough, and roll it out into an oval measuring approximately 12×20 inches. Lightly stretch the corners of the dough to shape it into a rectangle.
- Brush the melted butter over the dough. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon, then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the dough.
- Use a rolling pastry wheel cutter or pizza wheel to cut the dough into 4ths vertically and 7ths horizontally to cut 28 squares.
- Gather the squares of dough into stacks of 4-5 squares. Arrange the stacks of dough in the pan as shown in the photos/video.
- Set the pan in a warm place to let the dough rest until it’s puffy and fills the pan, which should take about 45-60 minutes.
Bake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake the bread until a digital instant read thermometer inserted into the largest part of the bread reads between 190-195F, about 40-50 minutes.
- Gently turn the bread out of the pan onto a cooling rack. Let cool for 10-15 minutes, then enjoy warm or at room temperature.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!
Frequently Asked Questions
Store leftover bread in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days. You can warm up slices by lightly toasting them on a rack in a convection oven.
I recommend a “small” pullman pan because it has taller sides than a standard bread loaf pan, which is helpful with this recipe. The small pullman pan measures 9x4x4, while the large size measures 13x4x4. As you can see in the video and photos, I used the USA 1-lb bread loaf pan for my first recipe test. It’s exact dimensions are 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.75, which is slightly smaller than a standard 9×5 loaf pan. The ends of the dough were pushed up and over the pan as the bread was baking, prompting me to place a baking sheet on the lower rack to catch the overflowing dough. The bread still worked out just fine, even with losing a few pieces off the ends, but keep in mind that this can happen with a shorter loaf pan.
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High Altitude Cinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Bread
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Dough Hook (this dough can also be kneaded by hand)
Ingredients
Tangzhong
- 2 tbsp whole milk
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 ½ tbsp bread flour
Dough
- 1/3-1/2 cup whole milk, warmed to between 110-115F
- 1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) good quality instant or rapid rise yeast
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 3 cups (14 oz) bread flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ¼ tsp ground cardamom
- 5 tbsp unsalted butter, very soft
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Filling
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
Tangzhong
- In a small saucepan, whisk together the water, milk and flour. Cook over medium heat for several minutes, whisking constantly, until it thickens into a paste.
- Remove from the heat and set aside until needed.
Dough
- Warm the milk to between 110-115F. Stir in the yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar, then let it sit for about 5 minutes, until bubbly.
- In the bowl for your stand mixer, combine the flour with the rest of the sugar, salt, and cardamom. Add the tangzhong, the milk/yeast mixture, the soft butter, eggs, and vanilla extract, then stir into a rough, shaggy dough.
- With the dough hook, knead the dough for 10 minutes on medium low speed. The dough should be soft, smooth and stretchy, pulling away from the sides of the bowl but still sticking a little at the bottom. If kneading the dough by hand on your counter, knead the dough for 15 minutes. If the dough seems too loose, add more flour, a tablespoon at a time. If it seems too stiff, add some warm water, a teaspoon at a time. After kneading, you should be able to easily gather the dough into a ball with your hands.Note: This is a dough that you do not want to be too soft or loose. If you cannot gather it into a ball in your hands, knead in a little more flour.
- Gather the dough into a ball and place it into a greased bowl that's at least twice as big as the dough. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to rise until the dough is doubled in size. Depending on the freshness and quality of your yeast, as well as the warmth of the ingredients and environment, this may take 1-2 hours. For me, it took 1 hour with the bowl sitting inside my oven on the "bread proof" setting.
Filling and Shaping
- Butter a 9x4x4 pullman pan (although if your pan isn't non-stick, you should use non-stick baking spray, or line the pan with parchment paper). The high sides of the pullman pan will make a tall loaf of bread, and help to keep the dough from overflowing the ends of the pan as it bakes (as you see happened with my shorter bread loaf pan in the video).
- Generously flour a clean counter top, and turn the dough out onto the counter. Gently deflate the dough by pressing on it with your hands, flour the top of the dough, and roll it out into an oval measuring approximately 12×20 inches. Lightly stretch the corners of the dough to shape it into a rectangle.
- Brush the melted butter over the dough. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon, then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the dough.
- Use a rolling pastry wheel cutter or pizza wheel to cut the dough into 4ths vertically and 7ths horizontally to cut 28 squares.
- Gather the squares of dough into stacks of 4-5 squares. Arrange the stacks of dough in the pan as shown in the photos/video.
- Set the pan in a warm place to let the dough rest until it's puffy and fills the pan, which should take about 45-60 minutes.
Bake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake the bread until a digital instant read thermometer inserted into the largest part of the bread reads between 190-195F, about 40-50 minutes.
- Gently turn the bread out of the pan onto a cooling rack. Let cool for 10-15 minutes, then enjoy warm or at room temperature.
Video
Notes
https://curlygirlkitchen.com/
Your recipe calls for a 9x4x4 pullman pan and says that you used a 9x2x2 pan in the video. I don’t have any idea what a 9x2x2 pan would be; was it a 9×5 or 8×4? Having said that, I’m thinking that using a few squares of dough on a greased plate or even just a piece of foil, would make a nice treat—kind of like using a small amount of extra dough to make a roll.
The USA 1 pound bread loaf pan that I used has slightly smaller dimensions than a standard 9×5 loaf pan. Its exact dimensions are 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.75. But I recommend the pullman pan with the higher sides so that the bread doesn’t overflow the ends. I’ve updated the FAQs in the post with this clarification.