alright I'm going to show you a beautiful braiding technique for our cinnamon raisin bread so my dough is already it's it's fermented it's doubled in size this recipe makes two raisin bread or loaves of raisin bread so I'm going to divide this in half so just kind of eyeball it you want sort of equal ish portions I'm using a bench cutter it's a really great tool for doing this I want to take my dough and shape it into about a five by nine ish rectangle so just with my hands and I want to be gentle not to overwork my dough at this point I don't want to lose any of that gas or structure that's developed in it during its fermentation process okay so there's my rectangle and then I've got a cinnamon sugar mixture that I'm going to pour on this is for my second dough and just kind of gently press that in this is kind of a messy job and I like to begin at the top and I just start rolling it down make a fold at the top and just start rolling all right so there's my finished rolled dough now this is the tricky part now again the bench cutter works really well for this or you can use a knife and you just want to push down and what this kind of helps to hold it together a little bit all the way across that log and then I have these two halves that I want to have facing up I want the cut edges up and I want to start twisting them together I like to start in the center you can start at the at the ends as well but this works well for me that way it's evenly proportioned so start in the center keep those cut edges up and just start twisting them really loosely and it can look really rustic that's part of the charm and then you want to kind of smoosh it all together there's parts that are looser or tighter than others you can kind of move them around a little bit tuck those little ends in and then I've got a prepared loaf pan I've got some parchment in my loaf pan it does tend to stick with all this sugar so you do want to line it with parchment and then it just goes into this loaf pan loosely covered with plastic or a damp towel let it proof for about an hour till it's just a little bit over the tops of the pan and then it's ready to bake and this is what it looks like when it's finished and comes out of the oven visit at code blue claim kitchen com for more tips