Dutch Oven Bakery’s Cinnamon Bread

Tastemaker

By Eric Cox | Aug. 15, 2020

Put it in the toaster. Smear it with butter. Use it for French toast. It matters not how you eat this decades-old bakery’s famous cinnamon bread — so long as you eat it, as locals have been gratefully doing since the 1930s. Dutch Oven Bakery (and café and deli), located in the heart of Alanson, has been serving their cinnamon bread — the bakery’s best-selling item — since it opened wayyyy back when. And no wonder people love it: While some other cinnamon breads offer a mere dusting of sugared cinnamon, Dutch Oven’s loaf, always sold whole and unsliced ($8.99/22 oz.), is riddled with it. And where the sugar-cinnamon combo is heaviest, the oven’s heat melts it into a brown-black slurry of sweet awesomeness that leaks from the loaf’s cracks and crevices. Moreover, this bread’s inner crumb is tight and spongy, almost like angel food cake. It toasts well, but you may need to de-crumb your toaster afterward. And, dear reader, should you be lucky enough to land this loaf, prudence dictates that you resist the urge to go in with both hands; children may be watching. Find it at 7611 U.S. 31 in Alanson. (231) 548-2231, www.dutchoven.com