High Altitude Cinnamon Swirl Bread

High altitude cinnamon swirl bread is lightly sweetened, made with soft and fluffy white bread with a cinnamon swirl inside. This bread is so delicious warm from the oven or toasted and spread with soft butter.

You might also love these high altitude recipes for the best cinnamon rolls, classic banana bread, and seeded no knead bread.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Looks Beautiful. Just look at the dramatic rise of this fluffy loaf of cinnamon swirl bread. It looks so beautiful and perfectly shaped.

Soft for Days. Keep the leftover bread for days afterwards, warming up slices in the microwave, or lightly toasting them.

Lightly Sweetened. There’s enough sugar in this bread to make it slightly sweet, but not so sweet that’s it’s like eating dessert. You can certainly reduce the sugar just a little, if preferred.

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. This recipe will work at any altitude, though, with the main difference being in how long it will take the dough to rise. The higher the altitude, the faster the dough will rise.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.

Ingredients

• Yeast. I use and recommend Red Star Platinum Instant Yeast. This is a superior yeast with dough enhancers, and always makes beautiful yeast dough for bread. You can also use active dry yeast.
• Flour. Use bread flour, rather than all purpose flour. Bread flour has a higher percentage of protein, giving the bread more structure and a chewier texture.
• Egg White. The egg white is important for helping the cinnamon sugar stick to the dough. This will help keep the dough rolled up tightly around the cinnamon swirl, and eliminate gaps when the bread bakes.

Instructions

Activate the yeast.

• In a saucepan, combine the milk, water, sugar and 1 tablespoon of butter. Heat the mixture over medium heat to between 110-115 degrees Fahrenheit.If the temperature is hotter or colder, the yeast won’t be properly activated.
• Remove the saucepan from the heat. Sprinkle the yeast over the milk mixture and stir it in. Let it stand for about 5 minutes, until it becomes foamy and bubbly.

Mix and knead the dough.

• Meanwhile, combine 3 cups of the flour with the salt in the bowl of your stand mixer. Add the milk/yeast mixture and stir together with a wooden spoon to form a soft, sticky dough.
• Attach the bowl to your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Knead the dough for 10-15 minutes, gradually adding in the remaining 1 – 1 1/4 cups flour. As the dough kneads and absorbs the flour, it will form sort of a “torpedo” of dough around the dough hook, and the dough will pull away from the sides of the bowl. The dough should be soft, supple and spring back when gently touched.Don’t add more flour than stated in the recipe, or your bread will end up too dense.

Let the dough rise.

• Lightly grease a large bowl and place the dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Set in a warm place to rise until doubled in size, being careful not to let the dough over-proof and get too big. It should take about 30-45 minutes.If your oven has a “bread proof” setting, use this. Otherwise, preheat the oven to the lowest setting, then turn it off before you set the dough inside to proof.
• Prepare an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch bread loaf pan by brushing the bottom and sides lightly with butter, then dusting with flour.

Shape and rest the dough.

• When the dough has doubled in size, lightly flour a clean work surface, and turn the dough out of the bowl. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to a rectangle measuring 8×20 inches.
• Brush the dough with the beaten egg white, then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
• Roll up the dough into a log, and as you’re rolling it, brush more of the egg white over the dough so that both sides of the dough that are touching the cinnamon sugar are sticky with egg white. This will help the cinnamon sugar stick to the dough to prevent gaps in the baked bread.

• Place the log into the prepared loaf pan, with the seam of the dough facing down against the bottom of the pan, and the ends tucked down.
• Set the pan in a warm place to rest for about 20 minutes while the oven preheats. The dough should be just starting to puff up above the top of the pan, but it will rise more as it bakes.

Bake the bread.

• While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Bake the bread for about 45-55 minutes, until the top is a deep golden brown, and an instant read digital thermometer inserted into the center reaches 195 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Remove the bread from the pan (it should lift right out if you prepped the pan with butter and flour), and set on a wire cooling rack.
• Cool for about 1-2 hours before slicing with a sharp knife.

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

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