This make-ahead apple cider bread machine mix creates a hearty loaf of sweet apple cider bread, lightly sweetened with honey, enhanced with a touch of cinnamon and bits of apple. This delicious bread is wonderful on its own, as french toast, or lightly toasted.
The wonderful part about this homemade mix is that you can make several of them at once, attach a finishing tag and put them in the pantry until you’re ready to bake up a fresh loaf of bread. We use our Westbend bread machine all the time, often for gluten-free and wheat-free bread recipes as well.
Usually, when we measure out our bread machine mixes, we make 5-10 at a time, assembly-line style.
We haven’t tried this recipe using dried apples, I think they’d be too chewy and wouldn’t constitute properly without the addition of extra liquid. If you happen to try it, please let me know how it comes out!
Apple Cider Bread Machine Mix
You’ll Need:
* 4 cups bread flour
* 1/3 cup white sugar
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 1/2 cup dry milk
* 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Combine all of the ingredients in a ziploc bag, or in a mason jar mixing well to combine. Write the following instructions on a tag and attach it the bag (or jar):
Apple Cider Bread
To Complete the recipe:
* 1 cup warm water 90F
* 1/2 cup + 1 Tbs Apple Cider
* 1 egg
* 2 Tbs. Honey
* 1/2 cup Finely chopped raw apple
* 4 tablespoons butter, softened
* 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
Mix the water, cider, honey, and egg until smooth, then pour into the bottom of the bread machine pan.
Gently dump the contents of the bread machine mix onto the water, add room temperature butter (or margarine) to the corners of the bread pan on top of the flour mix.
In the center of the mix, make a small well, add yeast.
Set the bread machine to sweet bread (or whatever setting your manufacturer recommends for such breads!), when the machine beeps to add in the chopped fruit, dump it in!
Ingredient Notes
*Bread Flour– Bread flour contains more gluten than regular all-purpose flour. However, you can use all-purpose flour in its place if you also add 1 tsp of Vital Wheat Gluten PER Cup of flour.
So for 3 cups of all-purpose flour, you would also add 3 tsp of gluten. For 4 cups of all-purpose flour, you would add 4 tsp of gluten. Wheat gluten is available in the baking aisle of most grocery stores (usually above the flour). It comes in a small box and should be stored in the fridge for increased longevity.
Bread Machine Note: The Bread machine that I used for the bread is the West Bend High Rise (dual paddle) model. Although this recipe should work fine in any Bread Machine.
Don’t have a Bread machine?- Here are the directions for making it by hand or by a mixer.
Set the bread machine to the Sweet (2 pound) loaf, with the desired bread crust color of your choice (light, med, dark).
