- Welcome back to "The Baking Journal."

I'm Stephanie, and today we are making this beautiful cinnamon star bread.

(relaxing jazz music) I am so excited to be showing you how to make this cinnamon star bread today.

Not only is it beautiful, but it's delicious, perfect for breakfast or brunch.

And honestly, you walk into a room carrying this beauty and you will be the star.

Let's get started.

Our dry ingredients include dry milk and potato flakes.

Both make this dough tender and flavorful.

To those we are going to whisk in our all-purpose flour, and then using the paddle attachment on the stand mixer, we add one packet of instant dry yeast, some warm water, softened butter, vanilla, sugar, and salt.

(relaxing jazz music) Mix that all together until the dough forms and starts to pull away from the sides.

(relaxing jazz music) (mixer whirring) Then switch over to the dough hook and knead the dough for two to three minutes on medium low speed.

(relaxing jazz music) (mixer whirring) The dough will be pretty soft, but should have come together.

At this point, spray a large bowl with cooking spray and place the dough into the bowl, turning it over once to coat the dough with the cooking spray.

(relaxing jazz music) Cover with plastic wrap and set aside until the dough is doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, we can prepare the filling.

It's pretty simple.

I'm just mixing some cinnamon with a combo of granulated sugar and brown sugar.

(relaxing jazz music) Okay, the dough is doubled in size, so let's dump it out on a lightly floured surface.

Give it a few kneads and then divide the dough into four rounds.

(relaxing jazz music) I'm weighing the dough to make sure each of my sections are about the same size.

You can eyeball it if you'd like, but your star might turn out a little lopsided.

Delicious, but a little sloppy as Paul Hollywood would say.

(relaxing jazz music) Cover the dough and let a rest for 15 minutes.

All right, so our dough balls have rested for the last 15 minutes, and now we're gonna roll 'em out and we wanna roll 'em into about a 10 inch round.

I have a little mat here that tells me where we are at 10 inches, but if you don't just roll to your little heart's content and use a 10 inch round bowl, or I have this pie pan cake pan here to actually look and see how close you are to those 10 inches.

All right, so here we go.

I've got a little bit of flour on my mat and I'm just gonna start rolling.

I like to just kind of pick it up and make sure, reposition it a little.

It's a little sticky, so we're just gonna put a little extra flour on top and continue to roll and see how nicely that is rolling out.

This is a great dough, and I think part of the reason is because of the potato flakes that we put in there.

It just gives it a nice flexibility and it will definitely give us a softer dough.

(relaxing jazz music) So I'm at about 10 inches here, and so I'm going to transfer this first layer onto a parchment lined baking sheet that I turned upside down.

And we're gonna transfer it the same way you would do like a pie dough crust.

So I'm just rolling slightly onto my rolling pin and then I'm gonna layer it down.

Here let me move this over so you guys can see.

(paper rustling) (relaxing jazz music) And then we're just gonna kind of rearrange it a little bit, trying to keep it in that little circular shape the best we can, because the way to keep the star looking nice and even is to try and keep our layers in a circular fashion.

So to this, we're just gonna put some egg wash, and I haven't added anything to this egg, I just beat it up a little bit.

And the egg actually will serve as a glue for our sugar cinnamon mixture, but also will serve as a glue for the layers.

So it'll keep the dough kind of attached to itself, which is an awesome thing.

All right, just a light layer, and then we're gonna take our cinnamon sugar mixture and just kind of spread it as evenly as possible.

I just kind of put it on around and then take my fingers and get that spread out to the edges.

You don't wanna go all the way to the end of your dough, leave a little bit of a rim so that the dough can kind of attach to the next layer.

(relaxing jazz music) And voila, there you have it.

So I'm going to do the other three balls of dough the exact same way, but the top layer is going to be the left bare.

And then we'll move on to the actual cutting and forming our star.

(relaxing jazz music) So I have all my layers put together now and a bare top, and we're gonna get ready to shape our star.

So the first thing you need to do is get about a two and a half inch to three inch diameter, either a bowl I'm using, just a little cookie cutter here, and just place that in the center of your dough.

And then we're going... What we eventually want are 16 cuts so that then we can twist our star tips together.

So the easiest way to do that is just kind of take a sharp knife.

You can take a pizza wheel and just start by doing quarters first and just make sure you get through all of those layers, because when we go to twist, that's gonna be important.

And then go all the way around.

And remember I told you to put the parchment on the backside of a baking sheet.

Well, this is the reason why, because it makes it a little bit easier and we don't have the lip then to make our cuts.

So here is our fourth cut, and then I'm just gonna take a quarter at a time and I'm going to go in the center of that and then in the center of our other cut and repeat what the other three quarters.

(relaxing jazz music) So here we have all of our pieces cut.

And here's the fun part.

Now we're going to twist these shapes together.

So what we're gonna do is we're just going to take two at a time of our strips, pull them apart and going in the opposite direction, twist once, twist twice, and then put our star tip together.

(paper rustling) (relaxing jazz music) And then we're gonna repeat.

You can kind of manipulate the dough a little bit if it's not doing exactly what you want it to do.

But we take two strips, opposite directions, twisting once, twisting twice.

And with that third twist, we're bringing our points together just by pinching it so that it stays in place.

So I'm gonna repeat with the rest the exact same way.

Twist once, twist twice, (relaxing jazz music) third twist, pinch together.

(relaxing jazz music) Great, and now let's transfer this to another parchment lined baking sheet only this one is rim up.

And again, method to my madness.

It's an easy transfer to just move it on over to that sheet, and that's what we're going to bake it on.

But before we're ready to let this guy rest a little bit, we're just gonna give it one last little coating of the egg wash And cover it up with some plastic wrap that I have here stuck to my drawer pulls.

(plastic wrap crinkling) And this just needs to rest for about 45 minutes or so, maybe a half an hour.

It's not going to double in size or anything like that.

It's just going to get puffier.

You will definitely notice that it's a little puffy.

And while I'm waiting on that, I'm gonna preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

It's been about 45 minutes, and you can see how the bread has puffed up into the preheated oven.

It goes for 12 to 15 minutes.

And while the bread is baking, let's make the icing.

I'm blending cream cheese with butter, confectioner's sugar, as well as some vanilla and milk.

You can adjust the amount of milk you use based on what consistency you'd like For the icing, I want this to be a little on the thin side so I don't cover up our beautiful star design with icing.

Of course, you could omit the icing altogether and just do a little dusting of confectioner's sugar.

(relaxing jazz music) (mixer whirring) Look at this bread.

Oh my gosh, I've put the icing in a piping bag and I'm just going to pipe icing over each of the star tips.

And the center, the bread is still a little warm, so the icing melts slightly.

What can I say?

It is gorgeous.

(relaxing jazz music) And here you have it.

Our glazed and beautiful cinnamon star bread.

I've been smelling this for quite a while and I can't wait to taste it.

Oh, man, I don't know if you can see those layers, but it looks yummy.

(relaxing jazz music) Oh my gosh, this is so good.

You get the sweet, spicy taste of the cinnamon, along with the little bit of butter that's in the dough.

The potato makes it just so soft and fluffy.

This is truly a winner.

I really hope you try it.

If you enjoyed this video and wanna watch some more delicious recipes, don't forget to hit the like button.

Subscribe, and I will see you next time on "The Baking Journal."

(relaxing jazz music)