Pineapple Coffeecake

This revamped 1950s coffee bread recipe is a Christmas staple. Moist, rich and perfect with a warm cup of coffee any time of year.

This bread dough comes to together very quickly, and only requires one rise before baking.

5 from 3 votes

Pour yeast, warm water, and sugar into bottom of mixing bowl in stand mixer, fitted with hook attachment. Stir with hook until sugar and yeast are dissolved. If you're worried your yeast might be dead, wait a few minutes for yeast to start foaming. If you're pretty confident your yeast is good to go, proceed to next step.
Add half of the flour and salt, and beat with hook for two minutes.
Add egg, butter and rest of flour. Mix with hook until dough is smooth, and starting to pull away from sides of mixing bowl, about 8 minutes on high speed.
Lightly flour a work surface, and empty dough out of bowl on to surface. Divide dough into three equal portions.
Using flour to assist you, use your hands to roll dough out to 10-12 inch ropes. Once you have three ropes, braid pieces together and tuck in the end.
Line a 12 by 17" sheet pan with parchment, spray parchment, and transfer braided loaf onto sheet pan. Loosely cover loaf with sprayed plastic wrap. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and allow dough to proof on sheet pan, in a warm spot, for about 1 hour. It'll grow about 50% in size.

Use a small sauce pan to gently heat all of the crushed pineapple.
In a bowl off the heat, whisk together cornstarch and brown sugar. Add to pineapple mixture.
Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Mixture should get thick and translucent. Taste it to make sure starch has thoroughly cooked (i.e. it shouldn't taste starchy).
Allow mixture to cool and set aside until ready to use.

Before baking, add about 1/4 of cooled pineapple mixture to top of coffeecake. Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes.
Take coffeecake out of oven, and add rest of pineapple mixture. Place back in oven, and bake for another 20 minutes. At this point, check coffeecake for brownness - if sides are getting too brown, foil the sides (this will probably not be the case.) Otherwise, just rotate bread, and check again in 15 minutes.
If the coffeecake is looking done on top, pull cake out and allow to cool on a wire rack.
If the top is still looking pale and a bit dough-y: make sure the coffeecake is in the center of your oven, then turn on the broiler of your oven. If you broiler has settings, turn it to low. Keeping a close eye on the coffeecake, allow the top to lightly brown. Once satisfactorily brown, pull coffeecake out of the oven, check bottom (should be brown and sound hollow when rapped with finger.) Allow to cool on a wire rack.

In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and milk. It should make a light glaze. Use a spatula or table knife to frost cooled coffeecake.
Allow frosting to set and enjoy!

Keyword 1950s, bread, Christmas, coffee breads, coffeecake, pineapple