This is a sweet bread that appears pretty elegant yet requires less effort to make than a straightforward French loaf. When I visited an Irish bakery, they had bread made with apricots. When the Irish bakery didn’t read my mind, I made up this recipe as it was the one I was envisioning.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 3 hrs 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs 50 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 1 loaf |
Ingredients
- 1 ⅜ cups water
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- ½ cup dried apricots, quartered
- 4 cups bread flour
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
Instructions
- Place water, olive oil, and salt into one side of a bread machine. Place 1/3 of the apricots on top of this fluid mixture with 2 cups of flour. Place more apricots in the middle of the flour, pour remaining flour on top, followed by remaining apricots. This will help weaker bread machines integrate the apricots.
- Run French loaf cycle for a 2-pound loaf. Remove from the machine after the cycle is done, about 3 1/2 hours.
- Add ingredients according to individual machine instructions. The cook time is how long it takes my machine to run that cycle.
- Interesting variations: Take out the fruit. It’s a nice rosemary bread. Add more apricots, 1/4 cup walnuts, 6 prunes, and 4 dates!? Yes. That’s very fancy. It comes out good, but transitions from a bread to dessert.
- Alcoholic, flat apple cider at room temperature can be substituted for water. It will be a little sour, but just as tender. If using this, I recommend reducing sugar to 1 tablespoon.
- You can use raisins instead of apricots; sweeter, but more mild taste. You can also use dried cherries; I’m an apricot enthusiast, but people say it was good. Chopping the apricots into really tiny bits and then adding them makes a delicious bread, with a strong apricot flavor. I have used 10 minced apricots, and 10 quartered apricots.
Reviews
This bread overflowed in the machine. and was undercooked. Not sure what went wrong
very tasty ,
I have 1.5 lb bread machine so had to adjust recipe but it turned out delicious