The Best Homemade Apple Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best apple for baking bread? ›

Granny Smith (in my opinion, this is the best overall apple for baking) Braeburn (a sweet-tart variety) Jonathan. Pacific Rose.

Why is my apple bread dense? To be clear, apple bread is denser than, say the light and fluffy stuff that white cake is made of. However, if your bread is brick-dense or tough, it was most likely over-mixed. It's important to be careful with quick bread recipes, especially when combining the wet and dry ingredients.

Too much moisture. Sometimes too much moisture makes bread fall so if that happens, you can reduce the oil or milk by a tablespoon or two.

If you're looking to ramp up the taste of your favorite bread recipe, we recommend adding a bit of fat. A fat like butter, olive oil or coconut oil in small quantities will help your bread achieve a higher rise and it will also boost its flavor by tenfold.

For the best pies, crisps, and other baked treats, apples need to be firm enough to hold their own during the cooking process. We call these apples “baking apples” and to namedrop, they include Braeburn, Cortland, Honey Gold, Jonathan, Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, Haralson, and Newtown Pippin.

Honeycrisp. One of the sweetest apples around, this Midwestern favorite is good for anything—including baking. It boasts a distinctive juicy crispness and is firm enough that it won't cook down much. It complements just about any other apple variety to make a stellar pie.

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier.

While bread flour is the best option, it can sometimes be used if you don't have bread flour. “Check the protein content,” advises Chef Jürgen, since it can vary from brand to brand, and an all-purpose flour that contains protein on the higher end of the range, 12 to 13 percent, will produce a better outcome.

Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.

TO STORE: Leftover apple bread can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for four days. TO FREEZE: Apple bread can be frozen for up to two months. Let thaw overnight in the refrigerator before serving.

Why does the crust fall off my homemade bread? ›

2 Answers. That sounds like you allowed the bread to dry while it was rising. And also that you allowed it to rise too long. The latter will produce large air pockets, and the former will make them form just under the crust.

Baking temperature

Some ovens run hotter than its settings, some cooler. If the oven is too hot the loaf will be brown and crispy on the outside but doughy in the middle and may collapse as it cools. When bread is baked at too low a temperature it will not rise enough in the oven resulting in a dense and sunken loaf.

While many bakers focus on flour, yeast, and water, there's a lesser-known but equally important ingredient that can make all the difference—cream of tartar. This unassuming white powder is the secret to creating the fluffiest and most tender loaves of bread.

Sweeteners such as malt and honey are used to add flavor to bread dough. Malt, which is available in powder and liquid form, can be added to almost any bread. It's important to use a nondiastatic version, though, as diastatic malt has active enzymes, which, in excess, will make dough extremely sticky.

Gala apples are better for eating raw and are best if you wanted to do salads with apples or if you wanted to add sweetness and crunch to your lunchtime sandwich. Fuji apples, on the other hand, are the better choice for cooking. This is because of the different textures of the two types of apples.

While great for snacking, Gala, Fuji and Red Delicious are the most common apples that won't hold up in the oven and will give you a watery-mushy pie, tart or cake.

In addition to fresh applications, SnapDragon apples can be simmered into jams, relishes, and sauces, cooked and served over roasted meats, or baked into bread, pies, tarts, cakes, and pies.

The Northern Spy apple is perfect for baking, but they only grow biannually, so they will be tougher to come by. If you are really dedicated to your apple pie, however, this will definitely pay off! Contact a local grower to see if you can come across some Northern Spy apples, and you will not regret it.