Now that’s breakfast!
As I previously mentioned, I am now going to be making my own breakfasts on a regular basis. To not get overwhelmed at the idea of making ALL my own food from scratch, I decided to enlist the help of my beautiful breadmaker
BREADMAKER TIPS
When you use a breadmaker, it is important to put all of the wet ingredients on the bottom. Then add the dry ingredients but make sure to end with flour and then the yeast. The yeast MUST go in last. If you have the kind of breadmaker that immediately starts to knead as soon as you turn it on, your ingredients must be at room temperature. Mine has a warming up period so I do not have to worry about that step which rocks!
SUZIE’S APRICOT BREAD RECIPE
1 cup of water
1/3 cup unsweetened cranberry juice (you can use another juice but it has to be unsweetened)
1/3 cup apricot preserves/jam/marmalade…
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup skim milk powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp coconut oil (or you can just add another tbsp butter)
Zest of one orange (I used a tangello)
3 1/2 cup of bread flour (but I added 2 tbsp as I watched the dough, it looked a little wet)
1 3/4 tsp bread machine yeast
Put the ingredients in the breadmaker in the above order and select Sweet Cycle, 2 lb loaf and the lightest setting. When your breadmaker starts to beep to indicate it is time to add the filling, I added 3/4 cup of chopped dried apricots that I rehydrated in cranberry juice. Three hours later and voila!
This recipe made an amazing loaf of bread and when you top it off with a tiny amount of butter and some apricot jam…!!! OMG, so fantastic. You will never find this quality of bread on the supermarket shelves. It is so much better when you make food yourself.
I just wanted to give a little shout out to my chef extraordinaire friend Steve who was on Breakfast Television this morning and has inspired me to make a special French toast with my apricot loaf, I’m going to stuff it with Nutella! Genius Steve! And congratulations, you did fantastic.
I didn’t realize you were back blogging. It’s so nice to see you!!
The bread looks awesome. Maybe I’ll try to find a bread machine one of these days. I’m glad to see the coconut oil as an ingredient. I use it for a lot of things.
Happy weekend!!
Jane
I have a breadmaker but I retired it because the bread was so delicious I was eating it ALL the time!! Could not stop myself:)
Apricot loaf sounds yummy.
I want a breadmaker! I’d love to make home made bread all the time instead of buying it. That bread looks yummy!
May I ask why it is important that the juice be unsweetened? -Suzie Jebo
S, I based this recipe off another one in a great book I have and they said that using a jam with additional sugar would change the texture too much. I think it would cause a lot of carmelizing which could lead to a tough crust and perhaps even a burned one. I hope that helps!