Regarding the question about cinnamon:
I was going to keep my nose out of it since I recently consumed a lot of
space with my comments about pumpernickel, cabbage and my rather flatulent
Retriever who became even more so after eating the rest of that soup I
made, but since Stephanie from The Netherlands piped up about cinnamon
suppressing the activity of yeast, I'd like to say that I agree.
An old trick some orchid growers use to keep fungi (yeast is a type of
fungus (or at least it was when I took Mycology 101)) from attacking newly
divided orchid plants is to sprinkle cinnamon (or sulfur) on the cut
portion of the rhizome (root). I suspect that if you have a recipe that
calls for a lot of cinnamon, it might be inhibiting the yeast, though I
haven't noticed the effect myself (not that I've baked a lot of
cinnamon-bread, mind ye).
If you want to experiment, I'd suggest either increasing yeast, decreasing
cinnamon, or decreasing salt which also inhibits the growth of yeast. In
fact you might be able to eliminate salt from the recipe altogether.
A simple experiment to confirm whether cinnamon is the culprit could be
performed quite easily in the kitchen without ruining another loaf of
bread. Measure out one cup of warm water into each of two glasses, add 1
tsp. sugar to each, and put 1 tsp. cinnamon in one of them. Then add 1 tsp
yeast to each glass and mix. Note how the yeast grows in each glass. If
the cinnamon does indeed inhibit the activity of yeast, you should see
little activity in the glass with the cinnamon, while the other glass would
be foaming over.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Quinn
Laguna Niguel, CA, US of A