Baking – How to make a more apple-y apple cider yeast bread

applesbakingbread

I would like to figure out how to make a strongly apple-flavored yeast bread

I found a recipe for a yeast bread that I was quite happy with, which starts with the yeast in 2 cups of milk, then uses 1/3 of a cup of honey as the source of sugar. More recently, I came across this BA video on cider donuts which starts out with essentially making mulled apple cider and reducing it to a syrupy/jelly consistency.

This inspired me to try to make an apple cider yeast bread. I found this recipe for an apple cider yeast bread, but it says that it produces a bread with "a hint of apple and a faint sweetness". "A hint of apple" is not enough for me, I really want to make a yeast-based bread that truly tastes of apple.

What I tried:

I substituted 4 cups of apple cider (with cinnamon, cloves, and an allspice berry), reduced to about 1/2 cup, for the honey in the original recipe (I checked, 4 cups of cider has about the same amount of sugar as 1/3 cup of honey).

Unfortunately, my bread came out tasting like a wonderful yeast bread, without the slightest trace of apple (it doesn't taste like the original recipe, I think it's actually better, but no trace of the apple cider). I would like to make my cider bread truly contain a strong apple flavor.

Can I:

  • Substitute cider for the milk from the original recipe
  • Make a second batch of the cider reduction and fold it into the dough somehow
  • Some other option that will produce a stronger apple flavor

Best Answer

I suggest that (in addition to using a reduction of the juice*/cider) you add some solid apple.

Personally I would get dried apple, of a tasty variety if at all possible, and put it through a food processor until fairly fine. I dehydrate my own home-grown apples, selected for flavour, but would buy Cox or Granny Smith for this. Then add as you would other dried fruit. If you get the really dry dried apple chips, you could partially rehydrate the pieces in spiced apple juice/cider to soften it a little, adding to the flavour.

* Where I'm from "cider" is always alcoholic, the unfermented juice is just "juice" even if cloudy, so I'll use both terms, hopefully correctly.

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